You need a balance between studying and playing. FCO is a great resource and you can kind of get an overall view of chess by reading it but if you're actually trying to learn an opening then it pretty much has to be one opening at a time. Coach Heisman is famed for recommending long slow games to learn how to play chess, but he recommends 5 minute blitz to learn openings. If you add a little knowledge to each game (and yes you have to analyze between games) you should fairly quickly learn at least the main opening line. I'm trying to learn them by playing 3day games to give me time to check out books (FCO is a favorite) and check various databases to see what's been played in the past. Not sure if I'm learning anything but I've become a whiz at chess opening research....
How to read Openings books?
One time, a friend of Bobby's asked him if he would give him a chess lesson. Bobby said sure and told him to go home and read MCO (Modern Chess Opening's Encyclopedia) from cover to cover. Usually this is just a reference manual where chess players can research specific opening line. Fischer specified he read the entire book including variations and the lines he did not play. The guy came back to Bobby exhausted a month later and said he was ready for his second lesson. Bobby told him "go home and read it a second time."
Wow, thanks for the responses fellas. It seems to me that Openings are simply hard to learn and takes lots of time to study so it shouldn't be a surprise that I'm having trouble (likely because I'm wanting to get it over and done with quickly and spend most of my study time on the other parts of the game). I think that you're right, baddogno, that I need to learn one at a time and play with it a little. Any recommended Openings books that would be more simple to read than FCO?
I'm obviously no expert but I know reading books specifically about the opening(s) you play would really help. For example, if you play the Ruy Lopez, just get a book on that and read it instead of just trying to flip through reference books like FCO and MCO. Although the reference books are useful, it is harder to really learn from them because a lot of times you end up just memorizing lines without really taking away the key ideas of the opening you are trying to study.
@londonkampung
The problem with simpler books is that you need to learn the ideas behind the openings and FCO is great at doing that. If you don't know the major plans for each side, then you can't react properly when someone goes out of book. This is why even studying openings at all isn't even recommended by many experts. It's a lot of work to really understand an opening and "bang for the buck" you would be better off doing tactics and end game studies until you're at least 1400 (1600, 1800, even 2,00 or 2200; take your pick depending on the expert)
You want easier resources? Sure; I can heartily recommend the 4 volume Chess Opening Essentials by Djuric, Komarov, and Pantaleoni. Not cheap obviously at $30 a book, but you can find it at Amazon.com for around $85 for the set. Beautiful colored diagrams with arrows and graphics and such. Bit of filler since maybe 20% of the books contents are nonannotated games, but they're easy enough to look up in a database and play through. You still gotta do the work though....
OK. you want even easier? Try software. ChessKing has a lovely stand alone program for around $25 called Chess Openings What you need to know. Imagine FCO as an animated chess board that you can step through both the main lines and most variations of hundreds of the most popular openings. Yes, there is even accompanying text to explain, FCO style, whyeach variation is doing what it's doing. There are 5 or 10 games that you can watch being played out for each opening as well. There is a test feature as well although I've never looked at it. You still have to study is the bottom line....Hope that helped.
Thanks a lot, mate. I have some resources on Chessbase that I'd like to go through. I think I won't spend much time on Openings for now, and focus on tactics and endgames, as you say, until I get a little better. Perhaps I can use a quick read of FCO to simply allow me to choose my favourite openings to play and then focus on those.
Hi everyone. I'm trying to read through FCO (Fundamental Chess Openings) at the moment and finding it impossible to get anything from it. Every time I read about a different opening and play through the moves, I completely forget about any of the others I've learned. How would you suggest to read these sorts of books and actually get something from it? I'm under 1300. Thank you.