Help improve my chess openings

August 18, 2013 12:17 PM

I've been playing chess casually since I was a kid. I feel like my middle and end games are decent, but my openings are weak, mostly because I haven't properly studied common openings and mostly make moves intuitively. What is the best method/resource (preferably online/interactive, but book suggestions are fine too) that would work as an "introduction" and later a way to strengthen my opening game for a non-beginner?
posted by coffee and minarets to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (8 answers total)

If I may begin by belaboring the obvious, Modern Chess Openings is generally considered the book to go to.

That being said, back when I was advancing my game the method that I preferred was to first identify and ruminate upon an opening that I wanted to know more about and then head over to a free chess site (such as Yahoo's) where I would post a note in the chat area of the higher rated player's lobby soliciting someone to play several games against me using said opening. There was virtually always someone around to give me a proper drubbing and some logs to study. They, in turn, would pad out their rating a bit.
posted by mr. digits at 1:01 PM on August 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

you need an opening repertoire. you have some control over the game and you can limit it to a subset of the openings you feel most comfortable in. as white, i open p-q4 and am comfortable in the queen's gambit or the white side of an indian system. as black, i play the nimzo against 1. p-q4 and the sicilian against 1. p-k4, and i have a good enough grasp on these to be the local champ.
posted by bruce at 1:15 PM on August 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

Seirawan's books are really easy to read and follow (lots of diagrams, algebraic notation), so you could start with his Winning Chess Openings. It's pretty basic and gives you a nice survey of solid openings to start with. Modern Chess Openings is a good book as well, as others have pointed out, and goes deeper into the openings. Get either or both, peruse the openings, find a nice solid opening that you like (avoid weird or broken ones), then practice it by playing lots of games. If you really want to get good write down the moves of the games you play for review later so you can find where you went wrong and learn what the better move would have been. If you live in any decent sized metropolitan area, you should be able to find a chess club or coffee shop where getting a game won't be hard. But to sum up: study, practice, repeat.
posted by jeffamaphone at 1:27 PM on August 18, 2013

Also, you can probably find a local master to tutor you for a reasonable rate. I highly recommend taking a few lessons if you can afford it. You'll be amazed at what 4 or 5 lessons will do for your game.
posted by jeffamaphone at 1:29 PM on August 18, 2013

I find, the thing about openings is people respond to your book moves in all sorts of weird ways so you need to know why the book has rejected them. To this end, download (free) stockfish, or even better, chessx which comes with it built in to find out how a computer punishes deviations.
posted by Obscure Reference at 2:16 PM on August 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm no pro, but I've been on a similar quest lately, and I've really enjoyed Shredder's ELO tracking system.
posted by oceanjesse at 2:25 PM on August 18, 2013

This is an oldie but a goodie: http://www.eudesign.com/chessops/ch-clear.htm
posted by wilful at 6:22 PM on August 18, 2013

As a strong player, I really like the ChessBase Online app for android. It's totally been worth the $10 I spent. Since I've started using it, I've been able to improve upon a lot of my opening lines with it. It has an online database of games where you can see what moves have been played before and which ones are most successful in a given opening position. It also has a built in computer engine (Stockfish) which is one of the best so that you can see what it thinks about the position as well. You might want to give it a try!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=chessbase.android.chessdb&hl=en
posted by Gosha_Dog at 8:08 PM on August 18, 2013