Opening Moves Made Easy

Its important to get off to a good start in a Chess game. Both sides start in a weak position, most pieces cannot move and the Kings need to get castled.

Most opening books concentrate on showing concrete variations. One shortcoming of knowledge of a concrete variation is that a move might be valid in one position, but even if another position has only one small difference then the same move may be a terrible blunder.

Another difficulty of memorization is the huge possible number of opening positions. Even after only a few moves there are many millions of possibilities. This book offers an alternative approach.

Understanding of ideas is more valuable than memorization of specific move sequences. Ideas can often be applied in different situations. It does not matter how much opening theory you know, you will always get into opening positions you have never reached before. The ability to improvise is invaluable.

There is an article titled 'My First Chess Tournament' on the Melbourne Chess Club website by a committee member, Simon Dale. His son Ari is now an IM (International Master). Here is part of his article.

I was most nervous about losing in 10 moves, so I asked Bill Jordan, a coach at Melbourne Chess Club, to show me chess openings. I am well known at the club because of my children and I am a volunteer committee member, so Bill was very happy to help. His one hour accelerated opening course was about opening principles, he did not teach me a single opening, but rather gave me confidence to just play with general ideas. This was brilliant because I did not have to learn anything and had the bonus of taking the experienced players out of theory pretty quickly. In my opinion this was a very solid approach for the beginner. This book is inspired by that lesson.

Opening Principles

The book examines standard opening principles and explores their strengths and weaknesses.

Opening Moves

This book examines likely moves in the opening, including the 20 possible moves in the initial position. It looks at the strong and weak points of each move. This is he bulk of the book. There are numerous example positions from real openings.

c3

• Controls b4.
• Controls d4.
• No longer controls the b3 and d3 squares.
• Obstructs the Queen Knight from its best square.
• Opens a new diagonal for the Queen.

c3 defends d4 and opens a diagonal for the Queen.

This book has over 250 large clear colour diagrams. You do not need a chess set and board to read this book. It is designed to be read several times. Each time it is reread, you may grasp points that were previously obscure to you. Enjoy!