Best method to practice openings/best software?

Hello all,

2 questions really.  I want to learn some openings.  I've been advised to create a repertoire of openings.  My first question is How?  Do I buy a book on openings and record those moves?  Do I go to Opening Explorer and just record what  explorer says is the most common response?

Also, do you have a recommended software?  I'm getting more and more familiar with what is available here @ Chess.com.  But there are others, like Lichess and Chesstempo.  I don't mind spending  some money, but Chessbase's $400 database is out of my league.  If they make such an animal I would like to be able to play particular openings against the computer.

FYI-I'm an old man that learned as a kid.  And that was so long ago there was no internet.  So please be gentle.  

Thank you for your time.

Don 

#1

"I want to learn some openings" ++ Why? Learn endgames instead, that is more useful.

"I've been advised to create a repertoire of openings." ++ Play the same way all the time. Most simple is to defend 1 e4 e5 and 1 d4 d5 as black and to open 1 e4 as white.

"My first question is How?" ++ Just play, think, analyse your lost games.

"Do I buy a book on openings and record those moves?" ++ No.

"Do I go to Opening Explorer and just record what  explorer says is the most common response?" ++ No

"Chessbase's $400 database is out of my league." ++ Chessgames.com

"I would like to be able to play particular openings against the computer"
++ You can. Set up a position and play from there.

Hi Don,

When I was first learning openings, my go-to resource was books. I started with Winning Chess Openings, by Yasser Seirawan, which was a gentle introduction to most main openings, discussing only the first 5 moves or so of each opening (suitable for beginners).

I then moved onto a slightly deeper survey of openings, Ideas Behind the Openings by Reuben Fine (algebraic notation). That felt a bit advanced for me in some regards, but it also taught me some useful concepts.

After that, I moved onto a much broader survey of openings, Fundamental Chess Openings, which describes the main goals and ideas behind all the major openings. This one I found most instructive.

Don't confuse this with Modern Chess Openings, which is mostly a printed database/catalogue of opening lines, with very little instruction at all. This is more for expert-level players and higher - those who don't need instruction or explanations, but merely want an encyclopedic resource.

If books aren't an option (or aren't something you're interested in), you can give YouTube a try. There are many YouTubers who explain openings and the ideas behind them. Some are better than others, so your mileage may vary.

Speaking of other resources, if you want a free database to look at openings, I like to use this one:

https://old.chesstempo.com/game-database.html

It may take some fiddling around to learn how to use it, but once you do, it can be quite useful.

Regarding your desire to practice openings against the computer, you can do this here, on chess.com:

https://www.chess.com/practice/openings

Choose the opening you want to practice. Choose your playing color. Then choose your playing level.

The computer will play against you, and give you feedback on each move you make. You can also takeback moves and try different things. A very helpful learning feature.

Hope any of this helps. Best of luck.

So ..... if your rating is accurate it is more important to understand the ideas in the opening you play, have in mind a middlegame structure you are aiming for and have an idea how to play your side of that structure. It is unusual for normal / average tournament players to get far (e.g. 5 moves) in an approved 'book' opening sequence before one player deviates from the moves both have been trying to memorize. At that point, understanding becomes what is important. So books explaining in words the ideas of the openings are important---IMO thinner is better.  After that the way to 'learn an opening' is to play through many, lightly annotated, GM games and get a feel for their tactics, where the pieces go, how to play the endgames that result. Playing it in blitz and analyzing the games is helpful (I find). I also find it helpful to take an unannotated GM game and make my own annotations. First from memory and my own analysis. Next I look it up in an opening book and add those comments and finally I turn on a computed and check everything written.--- Sorry for the long post!  -Bill

I can’t put in as much effort into responding as the others here (they’re too powerful… my EYES!)

but what I would suggest is, after you know the lines you want to memorize, play over them and take short breaks every now and then to make a diagram + analysis on what you’ve learned. It makes it stick much better than say chessable’s spaced repetition program…

Welcome!

First, I'm not sure who recommended you study openings.  At your current level, you should focus on opening principles and tactics if you are looking to improve.

That said, if you want to learn specific openings, you will want to find an annotated game collection on that opening.  The "Move by Move" series by Everyman Chess is very good in that regard.  To find an opening you like, find a top player whose games you enjoy and adopt their opening.  For example, if you like Caruana's Ruy Lopez games, pick up "The Ruy Lopez Move by Move".  If you enjoy Ding's Catalan games, pick up "The Catalan Move by Move", etc.

You do not want to try to memorize moves here, but rather get the ideas of the opening.  What is each side trying to accomplish?  What are tactics you should watch out for?  What are the ideal squares for your pieces?  What are the pawn breaks and when should you be looking to play them?  Etc.  In some of the more theoretical lines (e.g. Najdorf, KID, etc) you may have to remember some specific move orders, but you will want to limit that as much as possible.

I do not recommend looking at the Opening Explorer to learn openings for anything other than looking at what masters have played in the position.  There are times where the most popular move is one that has been refuted, but was played often in the past.

Chessbase is only ~$120 for the software.  It is the Mega Database that is the other ~$300.  You can skip that and just download from TWIC (This Week In Chess) archives to build your own database (you just won't have the thousands of annotated games).  If you are looking to play OTB events, the core ChessBase software may be worth it to you.  You can download the lastest version of Stockfish (free) and add it to Chessbase to play games against the world's strongest player anytime you want.

Other than books (there are far too many options to list without knowing what openings you might be interested in), Chessable is one of the better places to experiment with openings.  In addition to their full repertoire courses (which you have to buy), they have free "Short and Sweet" courses that give you an introduction to a given opening.  You can play around with those to find ones you like.  The other added benefit to Chessable is it has a wide range of tactics and endgames courses (which would be much more useful if you are looking to improve).

No worries.  You are never too old to learn!  I would just caution you to not spend too much time digging into openings if you are looking to improve.

I would like to say thank you to all that responded.  I appreciate everyone's point of view.

I've read the different points of view regarding when to dive into openings.  I am certainly not going to be some savant and memorize a book full of openings, and every variation to each move.  But I find myself facing humans and computers alike that baffle me with some weird opening and I feel at a loss.  I would like to mix up my "training" schedule with some time looking into some different openings.

When in doubt I fall back on the old adage "just play good chess"---develop your pieces, connect your rooks, control the center and castle sooner rather than later.

Again, thank you all for your insight.

"I've been advised to create a repertoire of openings.  My first question is How?"
A while ago I made youtube series titled "Building Chess Opening Repertoire - Step X" (1,2,3). It documents the best way I could think of for doing this in ChessBase, if you end up going this route.

An opening repertoire will not help you against weird openings. There is too much variation, too many weird lines you can face. That's why it's recommended to start with opening principles. Not as a fallback scenario, but as your primary mode. That said, you could certainly investigate certain openings you face regularly. 

If you decide to start working on an opening repertoire, my experience might be of interest. I've gone through the whole process and I've written about it on my blog. 

One more thing. Try to play humans instead of computers.  There are reasons to play bots from time  to time, but these should be exceptions. The playing experience against humans is far more relevant at this stage. 

Thank you ChessFanNM!

I think that chessable is the best platform to learn chess openings in an efficient way. Along with this, lessons and puzzles on Chess.com also helps one to improve your game.

Chess Openings Resources for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/openings-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell

I am probably behind the times, but does chessable allow one to see for a given position

• statistics across a large DB tree for all the possible moves
• engine evaluation
• example games by grandmasters in a current position

and use the above to easily update your repertoire with what now transpires a better move/plan?
My naive understanding is that chessable comes with predefined repertoires, which can be great and is good at helping one memorize those, but leaves less room for building repertoire yourself (while I understand you can make your own 'courses'). Please correct me if I am wrong.

Yes, yes, and kind of.

It has a database (similar to the LiChess Master database or the Chess.com opening explorer) and it has an Analysis windows available from any position.  The "updating" part is a trickier answer.  You can update a course you create, but not a purchased one.  So, if you buy Sam Shankland's 1.e4 repertoire (for example) and want to use a different line than the one he chose, you would have to make your own (private) course for the lines you want to use.

In terms of building a repertoire, there are a few options: 1) You can build your own, 2) You can buy one of the "complete" repertoires, or 3) You can piece together one using the more focused courses (i.e. use Grandelius' Ruy Lopez with the Dismantling the Sicilian, and Harikrishna's French Toast course).

Most club players are going to do #2 or #3 (and that is their target audience).  In fact, I would say that most players below the master level should do #2 or #3 as opposed to #1.

Several very strong players have published complete repertoires with different goals.  The problem I have with many of those is you may not like a choice they make in one opening, but like a choice they make in another.  Say you like the Open Sicilian, but not the Nc3 French.  Having a course that has both is only halfway useful for you.

Thanks for the overview - for some reason "opening explorer" button is greyed out for me on the chessable analysis page,  perhaps it is part of the "pro" features. I've heard one GM saying that he no longer uses chessbase for openings, and just looks up everything within lichess. So I can see that things are going the way of the web. But then the same GM also himself admitted that he does not really maintain an opening repertoire (other than in his head) ... I learn openings by playing blitz games on lichess and then updating my "openings PGN file". For doing something like this I feel chessable might still be a few features away.

That may be.  I have had a Pro account for so long I forgot which features are limited.

I don't see people going to the cloud storage for their personal game analysis and opening prep as a primary method of storage.  You are just putting too much in the hands of people well outside your control by doing that.  The LiChess studies feature is too limiting to be useful for that.

Most people would not be building an opening repertoire from scratch, so I suspect that feature will almost never get added to Chessable.  It would be nice to have "private" lines (i.e. of you buy a course and want to add notes on a line or add moves to the end of a line, etc) that only you could see.

Personally, I do all my analysis in ChessBase, store all my games there, and do my opening research there (what little bit I do that is).  I use Chessable to drill the things I want to commit to memory (tactics, endgames, and the primary opening lines I run into often).  For a beginner looking to learn the ideas of an opening, Chessable can be an excellent option (as long as they do the reading to understand the moves instead of just memorizing then).

Just noticed that I didnt really answer your question.... What I do [another old man] is keep physical pages of my openings written out. I stable folded sheets into little booklets and record my intended opening play there. Moves that are critical and/or non-intuitive or tactical I record as a chess position quiz with a set of old-style postal chess stamps. (It may be better to simply save the position as an image but I like the process of making a physical diagram w stamps). Periodically I update my booklets. As I play thru GM games I also record critical /thematic tactics in the MGs of openings I play the same way. It is non-optimal but OK for me and easier to review than lines in a book. -Bill

Thank you, SwimmerBill.  And thank you for those who have contributed.  I have a deal of research to sift through, and I am grateful.  -Don