Chess is a game of skill and knowledge. As a beginner, the more you understand the game, the better you’ll be at beating the opponents.
When you play online, the game will match you with players who are at your level. This is good because as you get better and learn more about chess, you’ll play against stronger players.
It’s important to understand that your openings should match your playing style.
In this blog post, I’m going to tell you about some chess openings that work well whether you’re playing with the white pieces or the black pieces. These openings are not just smart; they’re also easy to remember. They will help you get better and move up in the ratings ladder.
Best Chess Openings For White:
Playing the 1st move is an advantage in chess. Listed below are the best chess openings for beginners.
1. Scotch Game
Scotch Game is a chess opening effective on all levels of chess. It was one of the main weapons of Grandmaster Garry Kasparov and he played it even in the world championship matches.
It’s one of those openings in which tension in the center gets resolved early on. The move order to reach a Scotch position is 1. e4 e5, 2. Nf3 Nc6, 3. d4.
From here on, there are many lines in the Scotch game, including the Scotch gambit, and you can check the details of all the Scotch lines in the video below:
The best thing about the Scotch opening is that you can find many Grandmaster games in this opening in the database, and they will help you a lot in making your Scotch lines stronger if you analyze those games and your own games to bring small improvements in your game each time.
There are many famous games played using Scotch in top-level chess, but my favorite Scotch game of all time is the one Ian Nepomniachtchi played against Ding Li Ren in 2020. You can watch it in a video link below:
The main theme in Scotch Opening, like in most chess openings is to control the center, and even a slight advantage from the opening will put you in a great advantage to win the game.
2. Reti Opening, Tennison Gambit
Winning a Queen in the opening is always great, even if you have to give away two minor pieces, it’s still worth it. This is exactly what we do in the Tennison Gambit of the Reti opening, and the line is quite effective against players under 1500 ratings.
There are at least two possible ways to reach a position from where you can play the Tennison Gambit. One is 1. e4 d5, 2. Nf3 and the other is 1. Nf3 d5, 2. e4
There are several move orders that can reach a successful Tennison’s Gambit but do remember if your opponent brings out the knight to c6 early on. In that condition, your Bishop and Knight sack will go to waste.
Perhaps a video tutorial can better explain this gambit and you can check it out in the video below:
3. Vienna Game
It’s a rare thing to surprise your opponent in an e4 opening line on move 2, but the Vienna game is full of traps you can use to lure your opponent into getting trapped.
It’s an opening International Master Levy Rozman suggests to every mid-to-low rated player to master, and beat way stronger players with it.
The move order with which Vienna opening starts is: 1. e4 e5, 2. Nc3
Recommended Openings with Black Pieces:
1. Englund Gambit
Although it’s a refuted chess opening, Englund Gambit is a very resourceful weapon you can use against players rated 1500 and below. Sometimes even the 1600s fall for them.
It starts with moves 1.d4 e5, and if white takes your pawn with dxe5, this is where the gambit begins and there are many tricky traps you can set up to make your opponent lose a piece. In some lines, your opponent will even get checkmated.
Check out all the Englund gambit traps in the video below:
2. Indian Game
Although it’s a more advanced opening, with a lot of variations in it. Indian game is a chess opening you can play against the widely considered boring opening move of d4 by playing Nf6.
The theme of such d4 openings is to close the things in the center and fight the opponent in a game of positional styled chess with a center fully closed. But there is always a c5 break for black with which you can open up the position.
Unfortunately, there are no video tutorials available for the Indian opening, but you can analyze it on your own. Or you can start by analyzing the game that I played against a random player online.
3. Scandinavian Defense
It will take some time to get comfortable playing the Scandinavian defense, but once you are comfortable with it, you will be able to play this opening with utmost confidence.
It’s one of those openings in which remembering the move order is very important plus one of those rare openings, where the queen can come out early and launch an attack against black pieces.
Scandinavian defense starts with 1. e4 d5, and has many different lines of variation, but the one in fashion and played at the top level is the Mieses-Kotrč, Gubinsky-Melts Defense variation. It has the annotations of e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qd6.
You can learn the Scandinavian defense in a video link below:
That’s all in best chess openings for beginners. We have also covered the openings for 1700 rated players, you can check them out here.