GM Eugene Perelshteyn joins the Dojo to rank the top five openings for Black against 1.e4 and 1.d4, for both Club and professional players.
(0:00) – Intro/metrics/opening discussion
(15:00) – Openings for Professional Players against 1.e4
(30:20) – Openings for Club Players against 1.e4
(49:40) – Openings for Professional Players against 1.d4
(1:01:30) – Openings for Club Players against 1.d4
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I Always loved Kasparov's style, but the reality is that "my style"🤣(probably i don't even have "a style"…) Is Much Much more like Karpov's, and Always was…slow, Boring, positional chess, for me a GG Is in an 70-80 move endgame… What i want to Say Is that i agree with you, i tried aggressive openings, but It just didn't worked for me. I got better when i Stuck to my beloved slow, positional, defensive openings
What a lousy statement, "play them all"?
This was good for me also thanks I really appreciate the video right ok bye🥰
The h4 line he mentioned in advanced caro is by far my highest scoring opening as white. Players up to 2200 don’t seem to know what to do and I win a lot of games with the exact same tactics.
Pro choices seem spot on but your master+ strength levels has you out of touch with the needs of "peasants" and I can't believe how off my suggestions are… SYSTEM OPENINGS are the way. Catalan and KIA as white. Eng Rat, Hippo, or modern as black… Czech Pirc (wins lots of e-pawns) all the way up to 2200!
Author's name is Kotronias in case you're here looking 😉 Go Mitch!!
I've been getting a few lessons lately and my coach has suggested Kostya's top choices for E4 and D4. Dragon & KID. These will be my very first openings to learn for black. It's interesting observing how my mind reacts to trainings when before I loved being free and never knowing what move would be next. Now having a plan changes everything. Where I hope to improve most is time management, as previously my move accuracy was generally more than satisfactory.
I think David's suggestion would be better if he said to taste them all and get a feel for what you like. Then focus on one and master is as best you can before moving on to the next. I think the most important lesson is to begin with the end in mind. More experienced players will understand what I mean there.
I have been learning nimzo and I like that many positions White can just drift into equal material but strategically lost position with any lazy moves. Their pawn structure is so bad. The pressure seems to be on white to produce something or suffer. Their light square bishop can often be made into pawn and if black achieves pawn on e4 white knight is also often useless.
The most interesting and instructive chess material in Yotube, hands down! Thank you for the great work!
Did the match mentioned at the end ever happen?
Was there ever a sequel to this for white openings?
no french ??
No, all defenses suggested by Eugene have animal names (humans are also animals in a zoological sense, right?).
I should have such a video 20 years ago, it would save me a lot of time. I don’t think it is great to play all openings, you will not really understand anything deeply. Opening is a great opportunity to study chess in a systematic way, and this means you should stick to one opening to have to time to learn and and learn from your games.
b6 is great for club players. even at the 1800 level, you will very rarely get more than 6-8 moves of a theoretical response
So when you say play them all, David, how long would you play them for? Switch every x games and just rotate e5, c5, c6 etc?
Gurgenidze: 1…g6 2…Bg7 3…c6 & 4…d5
The Rat: 1…g6 2…Bg7 & 3…d6 (1970s name, esp. Canadian: see p.14 of Botterill/Keene book on the Modern)
But as Ludwig W insists, the meaning is the use, so this feels like picking an argument that I have already lost…
Great job !
You forgot the Alekhine!
In my onion, practising openings is good. But, studying the end game, practising tactics with puzzles and applying the main chess principles as much as possible and playing rapid and classical is, by far, the most effective at beginner level.
I have tried different openings and the more I study openings the more I lose. I mean what's the pont in getting a wining position in the opening if you can not convert it in the middle and end game.
Hi can someone explain the Kan 45:24 ? It's not the Caro-Kann, correct?
Peasants 😂😂😂😂😂
In which my openings as Black (Pirc/Old Benoni) are ignored or considered terrible. Le sigh.
But how can we define the "best" openings without taking into account the style and strength and weaknesses of the player, either peasant or pro? Big gap for me is a black answer against the Catalan.
Club Players have limited study time.
The advantage lies in openings you can force upon your opponent so you can stay in Book while they are out of book.
You’d be surprised how many games at club I win playing the Chigorin Defense.
Following this concept, openings/defenses that you can force and are good:
1. Scandinavian
2. Dutch
3. Petroff
Etc
As White the GPA, Bishop’s Opening, Panov Attack, Monte Carlo, etc
Easy to learn. Easy to force upon your opponent for consistency.
For this reason I play the Grand Prix Attack. All my club opponents are clueless against it because they spent all their study time on open Sicilian lines.
But as a player seeking long term growth, and positions that match my style, I play Caro-Kann, Nimzo/Ragozin complex in OTB 90+30 events.
Great info! Thanks for the help. This is my favorite chess channel.
I feel sad because Jesse doesn’t like the caro:(
Let me preface this by stating I am a class C player. I play the English Botvinnik for white and e6 for black. Then either Classical Dutch or French.
I have to only partly agree with David on the play all the opening. I think that will work to understand what they might like while young. As an adult improve I have to disagree with this.
As to the mention of how many rating points you could gain from an opening repertoire I think there is big value here. Let me explain. I recently came back to OTB. Found I was a more positional minded player, hence the openings above. I have been following Ginger GM style of training. The only training I have been doing is Tactics, 7 Circles from Rapid Chess Improvement book and opening prep from chessable courses in those openings. With that being said the opening training is more on ideas and plans rather than memorizing lines. I have stuck to only those openings and tactics for the last 3 months. I initally took a dip in my rating from 1450 > 1344 since my return to OTB.
With that being said I can say there is huge benefit from sticking to limited openings. Now I think most of my improvement has come from tactics of course but what I will say is I feel much more comfortable in the positions I am seeing. I am getting used to these style of game play and what might arise. And with that comfort allows for risk taking and sometimes only solid play since I have a feel and a sense for the position as I have gained experience in these openings. My last performance took my rating from 1344 > 1496 in 4 weeks in my latest tournament at my local club. It we was met with many comments of wow you are so underrated or you are certainly a class B player.
What I am trying to say here is my experience I believe is a combination of everything you all were talking about. A healthy mix. I think when young you need to experiment and learn all the openings like David said to at least understand the basics and types of positions and pawn structures you may enter. Then as you grow into a longer term club player like myself specializing and using a more focused approach is a great idea. Love these discussions and chats. Looking forward to seeing what you all say for White. Keep up the great work.
You have to fall in love with your opening!
I can tell you my experience as a club level player. Against another player with similar skill the opening doesn't matter much. We both screw it up. Against a player significantly better than me then it matters a lot. I fall into way too many traps or just get a horrible position and get slaughtered. However, if I play a "system" type of opening then I can at least get into the middlegame before I get slaughtered. Plus, and this is huge, I only have so much time to study, and devoting that time to tactics and endgames is FAR more beneficial.
recommending the scandi for club players makes no sense. You'll face opponents over and over again eventually they figure out how to play vs the scandi and you fight for a draw every game. theory is very easy to learn for white
Super-helpful and interesting: thanks very much to everyone. … Question: Since the time this video was made, has anyone changed or updated their recommendations?
dutch against d4 😂
Fun video! Surprised to see the Marshall Defense ranked so highly – my most successful attempts with it always transpose into some variation of the Grünfeld Defence! Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts!
Different openings for pros and peasants sounds very condescending!
Who is the strongest player on the list?
As the Little Dragon famously said, he didn't fear the man who practiced 10,000 kicks once, but the man who practiced one kick 10,000 times.
Why have superficial knowledge of all openings in chess when you can pinpoint the ones that suit your style, personality, strengths, and weaknesses?
Another point to consider is that everyone is wired differently. Some people enjoy variety and diversifying their skillset, often because doing the same thing over and over bores them and because they believe in that approach on a philosophical level to some extent.
So forcing such people to play just one opening will make them quit chess because they'll constantly be pulled towards trying different and new things whereas those who enjoy perfecting and min-maxing would feel annoyed and inefficient if they had to learn bits and pieces of all the openings.
As someone has nicely pointed out already – when you aren't as familiar with an opening, you'll be dead in ten moves against a strong player. The only time half-assing an opening works at a club level is when you're both winging it or you are much stronger than your opponent and can open with literally any move or troll idea and then just slowly outplay them.
I enjoy positional system openings that don't leave much room for 100 different gambits you have to know or you're dead. Does that hurt my tactical development? Most definitely. Does that hurt my theoretical knowledge and ability to adapt to sharper lines when the games call for it? Absolutely. There are lines in the London that lead to an improved Scotch gambit and such that I don't take advantage of because I'm trying to keep the game in the spirit of the cozy London.
I have almost no knowledge of any e4 gambits and such and would get demolished by lower rated players who cheese with them. But give me my familiar structures and now I can make a decent player work for his meal.
Kids have more time and capacity to absorb information. So it makes sense to encourage them to try different things.
For adults, time and efficiency matter. You need to identify your goals and work on them because you don't have ten years to play wild gambits just to prepare you for the next 10+ years of chess career as a positional player who can sprinkle in that info from childhood when needed.
I play the London and Caro-Kann & Semi-Slav and have so much more to learn there that it makes no sense to start learning other openings in-depth that don't occur in my games. I'm vaguely familiar with them, but that's it. For example, I need to know the Benoni structures even though I don't play Benoni as Black but do face it as White when forced out of the standard London lines.
My logic is that I'll take on new openings when I know ~15 moves of precise theory for every line in my main repertoire. Until then, I ain't got time to memorize theory for new openings nor am I forced to do it.
Returning back to specialists vs. jack-of-all-trades, you can see it at a Super GM level also. There are players who specialize in one opening. Likewise, they are familiar with other openings to the extent they need to be. They apply the same logic and division of labor as a specialist at a club level.
So ultimately, the answer to this topic comes down to the person. Someone will thrive playing as few openings as possible, another person playing as many openings as possible.
Each individual has to try different openings and find his or her home.
And no matter what we think is the best approach, it's important to not go to the extreme – if you believe in learning many openings, you should still spend some time in specializing, and vice versa.
P.S. Kostya pointed out another important aspect to also pick openings that will help you learn middle games.
Likewise, Pruess made a good point about picking openings that make you face your weaknesses, but he needs to take into account we need to primarily work on what we enjoy to maintain interest in chess – who'd want to play openings he hates for years just to have a more complete chess game down the road, especially if you need to spend a ton of energy on learning theory for those openings.
And Jesse made a fair point about playing openings with more space being challenging.
Video on white?
Surprised that at the Pro level, nobody picked the Petroff.
For the Caro for the pros, do you mean the Tartakower or the Classical?
I really like this episode but I think it's not available on apple podcasts (at least I can't find it there). Any chance it could be made available so I can listen offline?
Very interesting!
The trouble with the Sicilian as a club player is that there are so many other line. Smith Morra, grand prix, Aladin, Rossolimo and so on
This was a very class conscious discussion, but half-hearted. The gentry ought to have no qualms about calling themselves the Lords and Masters if they properly compare themselves to the mean plebs and peasants. Surely what is good for the nobler oughtn’t be good for the lesser. But when you fancy yourself “pro”, we look to the “amateur” for his opposite, rather than a dirty pleb or proletarian. Men well read in philosophy must be keenly aware of such categories, even as the Lords & Masters of mankind shan’t hesitate to affirm their Lordship as against the common vermin. As an amateur I am hopeful that I am not peasant vermin, but at least petty bourgeois. 😅
but many Grandmasters could be called plebs because they don't have education or money or respectable job
what about the french?!
Eugene is "The Man."
This was very interesting… but where is the companion video for white? Maybe doesn't make sense because it is black that "chooses" the opening. Would love to see a version of this ranking the "system" openings: KIA, Botvinnik, Colle, Larsen/Zukertort etc.
Funny watching this 3 years later and hearing all the references to Nepo's dynamic repertoire, compared to the Petroff and semi-Tarrasch machine now!
Play them all ! ! 😂 dude just berried his opinion