how many should I be familier with?

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ARandomPerson

I am aware that I am suppoosed to know many openings, but how many should I know in depth?

Also what order do you think I should learn openings in?

Right now I am a strict ruy lopez player otherwise I struggle a bit.

Shivsky
ARandomPerson wrote:

I am aware that I am suppoosed to know many openings, but how many should I know in depth?

Also what order do you think I should learn openings in?

Right now I am a strict ruy lopez player otherwise I struggle a bit.


Choosing an opening is like choosing a melee weapon to go into a fight with. If your muscles are scrawny and you have no sense of footwork or balance, you're going to get murdered by stronger opponents regardless of how pointy your sword might be.

My advice to you is to play the few lines you like but invest the majority of your chess time and learn the endgame, work really hard on tactics (the muscle I was talking about) and strategies such as pawn formations.   Also => Have a strong player critique your mistakes ... and try to stop making them.

tryst

I hope you don't mind if I've commented in your last few threads, ARandomPerson. But, memorized all the openings and a variation or two when I started. It was really a lot of fun to play them all, and know their names. But I didn't "understand" any of them. Gambits, Indians, Reverse openings, etc. I started to see that some of the openings caused trepidation in me, as I was quite overwhelmed by the tactics allowed in my position. I didn't understand long-term strategy at all, so I didn't know where my advantage may lay in a given position. I would win some and lose a ton! Then, after studying some grandmaster games, I chose two openings for White, and three defences for Black. I would only play those openings until I became used to how the game should look when I'm winning, and how the game usually looks when I'm losing. I started to understand strategy through the habit of seeing similar positions deeper into the game. That is where I am now, through reducing the variety of opening choices, I am beginning to understand strategy in positional chess.

mcfischer

Double king pawn openings are a good place to start, so youre fine there.. but mostly dont worry about openings and work on the tactics. A study was made a while ago showing weaker players that put in a high amount of work on openings per weak never usually make it to the A-class.