What Chess Opening Should I Play? Building a Repertoire That Works

It is probably the most frequently asked question in chess, and it is almost always framed wrongly. There is no best opening: there are openings that take you to positions you know how to play and openings that do not. Choosing well means choosing the kind of game you want to have.

The question actually worth asking

Instead of "which is the best opening?", this one:

What kind of position do I play best in?

There are four answers and each leads to a different repertoire:

Open, tactical positions. You like calculating, attacking the king, things happening. → 1.e4 as White, 1...e5 as Black, gambits.

Closed, manoeuvring positions. You prefer arranging pieces, improving slowly, no chaos. → 1.d4, London-type systems, the Catalan; as Black, the Slav or the Nimzo-Indian.

Unbalanced positions. You are comfortable fighting with asymmetric material or structure. → Sicilian as Black, King's Indian.

Little time to study. You need something that pays without memorising. → A system: London, Colle, or the King's Indian Attack.

There is no wrong answer. There are repertoires that do not match the player, and those are the ones abandoned after two months.

How many openings you need

Far fewer than it seems. A complete repertoire is:

• One opening as White.
• One defence against 1.e4.
• One defence against 1.d4.

Three things. That covers ninety per cent of the games you will play, and the rest — 1.c4, 1.Nf3, oddities — is handled with general principles.

Having more repertoire does not make you stronger: it makes you less familiar with each position, which is exactly the opposite of what you want.

Why copying a grandmaster is a bad idea

It is the most common trap. You pick your favourite player's opening, and it does not work for three reasons:

It is built against a different opponent. An elite repertoire is prepared for someone who studied the same line to move twenty-five with an engine. Yours has to work against someone who leaves the book on move six.

It requires knowledge you do not have. Many elite lines are good only if you know the exact continuation. Without that, the same position is hard to play.

It is fashionable, and fashion changes. A line appearing in every tournament this year will have a fashionable refutation next year. None of that affects you at your level, but it does affect the material available.

How to choose in practice

Step 1: play ten blitz games with the candidate opening. Do not study anything first. The goal is to see which positions actually appear and whether they feel comfortable.

Step 2: ask yourself whether you understood the plan. Not the variations: the plan. What is this opening after? Where do the pieces go? Which is the key break? If after ten games you cannot say it in one sentence, it is not yours — or it still needs explaining to you.

Step 3: stay for a year. This is the step almost nobody takes and the one that pays most. An opening starts paying back when you recognise the structure without thinking, and that takes months.

What to study about an opening

In this order, and no other:

1. The idea. Which structure it is after and why.
2. The first six to eight moves of the main lines.
3. The typical middlegame plans that come out of that structure. This pays the most and gets studied the least.
4. What to do against what people actually play, which is almost never the main line.
5. Only much later, deep theory.

Most people do step 2 and jump straight to 5. Which is why they know fifteen moves by heart and have no idea what to do on the sixteenth.

Three repertoires that work

For someone starting out who wants to learn chess, not openings: 1.e4 with the Italian; 1...e5 against 1.e4; the Slav against 1.d4. All natural, all teaches principles.

For someone with little time: The London as White; against 1.e4, the Caro-Kann or the French; against 1.d4, a system with ...d5 and ...e6. Little theory, lots of familiarity.

For someone who wants a fight: 1.e4 with the Ruy López, or the King's Gambit if you are brave; the Sicilian against 1.e4; the King's Indian against 1.d4. More work, and games that never end in a boredom draw.

What each family of openings looks like

Before choosing, it helps to know what kind of game each thing produces, because that — and not the opening's reputation — is what will decide whether you enjoy it.

1.e4 e5, the classical open games. Open centre, fast development, early tactics. It is where you learn the most pure chess, and it is what almost everybody should play for the first two years. Against: there is a lot of theory if your opponent knows it.

The Sicilians. Asymmetrical positions, sharp play, attacks on opposite wings. They produce the most interesting games and also the hardest to handle without knowledge.

Semi-open systems like the French or Caro-Kann. Closed, stable structures, long-term plans, much less to memorise. It is the choice that pays most for somebody who wants to understand rather than calculate.

1.d4 and the closed games. Manoeuvring play, the game decided in the middlegame, and fewer chances of dying on move fifteen. It is the positional player's territory.

Systems — the London, the Colle, the King's Indian as Black. They are played almost the same against everything, which saves a great deal of study. Against: they produce similar positions every time, and past a certain level they limit you because your opponent knows exactly what you are going to do.

Choosing means choosing one of those five experiences, and that decision matters far more than which concrete variation you play inside it.

When to change opening, and when not to

Changing is the answer everybody reaches for after losing, and it is almost always the wrong one. Three legitimate reasons and three that are not:

Change when you have spent months reaching positions you do not understand — not that you lose, that you do not understand; when the opening depends on a trap nobody falls for any more; and when your style of play has shifted and the opening got left behind.

Do not change after a loss — the opening was almost never the cause; because somebody strong said yours is no good; or because you lost three games in a row with it, which statistically is completely normal.

And a warning about the cost: changing opening costs about three months of worse results. The first twenty games with something new are played badly by definition. That cost is worth paying once every two years and is not worth paying every two months.

How to test an opening before adopting it

You can test cheaply, and almost nobody does:

Play ten rapid games with it, studying nothing. The aim is not to win but to see whether the positions feel comfortable. If by the fifth game you still do not know what to do on move twelve, it is not your opening, however good it is.

Watch five complete master games. Not the first ten moves: the whole game, through to the end. What you are looking for is the shape of the game: where the play is, which piece ends up being the good one, what the typical endgame looks like.

Notice what it forces you to study. Some openings have one dangerous line and the rest is common sense; others have six. With one hour a week available, the first is the right choice even if the second is objectively better.

And check that you have an answer to the odd stuff. A repertoire breaks not in the main line but in the strange line somebody at your club plays. If you have nothing against the three or four commonest sidelines, it is not complete.

Ten rapid games and five master games are two hours, and they save the three months of having chosen wrong.

What to be clear about

Below 1800, the opening is almost never why you lost. Games are lost to hung pieces, to not knowing what to do in the middlegame, and to not finishing endgames.

A repertoire exists to get you to move fifteen with a position you understand. That is all it has to do, and it is plenty. What decides the game comes afterwards.

Related questions

What is the best opening for a beginner? 1.e4 with White and 1...e5 with Black, without argument. They produce open positions where tactics come up often, which is exactly what needs training in the first two years.

Can I play the same opening for life? Many strong players do. A narrow, deeply understood repertoire returns more than a broad, superficial one, and the only downside appears at high competitive level, where opponents prepare against you.

What if my opening has a bad reputation? It almost never matters below 2000. The objective difference between a good opening and a mediocre one is far smaller than the difference between knowing it and not knowing it.

How many lines do I need against 1.e4? One, well understood, plus a general idea against the sidelines. Two different answers to the same thing doubles the work without gaining anything until quite a long way up.