Chess is fun. The more you know it, the better you are equipped to take down a player of equal strength. And the way online chess is designed, the algorithm will always match you with players around your rating.
You can call it a blessing in disguise, and build and improve your chess repertoire to become a better and better player. Know your style of chess and choose the openings accordingly.
I’m currently a 16 and 1700ish player in online chess, and 1500s was the rating where I stayed for the longest of times. You can check my profile here.
1851 is my highest chess rating to date and the thing that helped me reach there is playing the openings that are more attacking. If you know your openings, they will put you in a position where it’s in your hands to solve the middle game and opening tactics and win the games.
In my case, I’m not that good at spotting the tactics every time, that’s why there is so much fluctuation in my chess rating. But my recommended openings will surely help you a lot. They are dynamic, exciting, and easy to remember.
In fact, you won’t need to remember them after playing a few times and there is a great space for mixing the move order in the opening.
Chess Openings Recommended for 1500 rated players:
Chess games with around 1500 ratings are mostly won in the middle game. But if you can squeeze your opponent early on both with white or black pieces, it will be a great advantage to start with, because players at this level are not good defenders.
Recommended Openings with White Pieces:
Playing the 1st move is an advantage only top-level chess players can truly understand. But aggressive chess openings that are also solid in the center are a good way to utilize this luxury of playing the 1st move.
Listed below are my favorite chess openings with white pieces for a 1500 rated player:
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:
There are many lines in Scotch opening beginning with 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6. 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. I won’t go into the details of any openings.
If you are already playing this opening, do check out the database of top grandmaster games in your favorite scotch game lines, but before that analyze your own games with an engine.
2. Reti Opening, Tennison Gambit
Winning a Queen in the opening is always nice, 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 in their 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
Most lines in this opening are tilted towards a king-side attack, and they are all very fun to play. The video link below will help you a lot in starting with this opening line of chess:
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 recommended chess openings for 1500 rated players. We have also covered the openings for 1700 rated players, you can check them out here.
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