Back in 2019, I wrote my most popular blog post, where I suggested a unique way of deciding on an opening. Whereas most people ask, "What opening fits my playing style?", which doesn't seem to help, I asked, "What do I prioritize when playing chess?" I listed several factors and then ranked each opening on them. This was fun to write and produced some thought-provoking results.
But, and there is always a but...
Re-reading it four years later, I basically disagree with the entire premise! At the very least, I have not followed my own advice: I currently play very different openings and I fell into those openings for a very different reason. My old idea is not discredited, but it definitely needs an update. Here it is.
My History
When I went through my own process, I came up with the Alekhine against 1.e4 and the Dutch against 1.d4. I tried both of these, using two Chessable courses: The Dark Knight Rises by NM Brian Tillis and The Killer Dutch Rebooted by GM Simon Williams. I got very different results. Against 1.e4, the Alekhine has actually become my best scoring blitz opening, so that's good!
You can't argue with the results, but something felt off. Despite winning these games, I never felt completely comfortable. When I lost, I lost badly. Even when I won, I often had doubts. It felt like I was playing for tricks, that I was relying on my opponent being thrown off by a wacky opening. The results kept me playing the opening, but as nice as winning felt, I couldn't shake that something was wrong.
With the Dutch, I never even got started. Here is one of the main tabiyas from the Killer Dutch:
This is recommended play?! It looks terrible! My pieces can barely move, my pawn structure is shattered and I see no way to take advantage of White's exposed King. The middlegame plan made no sense to me, relying on moves like ...b5 and ...Na5, and I frequently failed my Chessable reviews. Black might be okay, but it seems like "computer okay". Certainly White score heavily better on lichess.
I never tried this opening. I didn't even complete the course. An opening needs to lead to a playable middlegame, and if this is the best it can do, it fails miserably in my eyes.
Is This The Opening's Fault?
No, of course not... but it might be the opening variations that are at fault. I may have picked the wrong flavour of opening.
I actually recognized this back in my 2019 blog post: there can be a world of difference within an opening. The French Winawer is very different from the Advanced which is very different from the Exchange. Heck, the French Tarrasch with 3...c5 is very different from 3...Nf6 which is very different from 3...Nc6. There's massive variance within a single sub-variation! How can I say anything definitive about the French as an opening when all of these are so different?
Similar logic applies here. The Dutch may still be an ideal opening for me ... but not William's Classical Dutch. The Leningrad and the Stonewall are two variations with very different flavours. Indeed, the Leningrad is probably more of what I was looking for: it has asymmetry, thematic plans, clear winning chances and, relatively, not much theory. Similarly, there is more than one way to play the Alekhine, and perhaps a different interpretation would have felt more comfortable.
The Problem
Ultimately, I picked the wrong teachers. I am not saying these are bad teachers, far from it. I love the Ginger GM. He's fun, he's entertaining and he embodies "chaotic good" chess. That's not me, though. I do not thrive in wild, unrecognizable positions. Williams thrives on this. He can find his way through the darkness, whereas I just get lost. Hiring him as my guide was bound to produce strife.
NM Tillis exists in the opposite spectrum: his Alekhine repertoire tends towards "nettlesome solidity". Similar to certain French positions, Black gets a solid position with a drop of poison here and there. This is much closer to my chess personality, but it might be too solid. It led too often to slightly plodding positions where my natural desire to have the pieces fly is thwarted.
This leads to a simple truth: you need to like the middlegame positions you get, really like them. It makes zero sense to spend time studying an opening if you don't like where it leads! Every other factor is subordinate to this.
Back in 2019, I had rarely studied an opening before, certainly not to the depth I tried with these two courses. I had assumed that studying a good book by itself would lead to a good opening. It does not. It is, unfortunately, more complicated than that.
I still think my original idea is sound: going through the various factors helps narrow down which openings to look at. It does not do all of the heavy lifting, though. You still need to dig down into the individual sub-variations and, most importantly, find a good teacher for you. Indeed, nothing else might matter.
How I Found My Openings
My story has a really boring ending: I saw GM Sam Shankland's free sample of his Semi-Slav course and liked it. I bought the full course. It completely blew me away. For position analysis, Shankland is the best teacher I have ever seen. Further, his teaching style completely meshed with me, and unlike Williams and Tillis above, I felt like I wasn't just learning a bunch of lines. No, I was learning about chess.
So that is how I found my opening repertoire: whatever GM Shankland recommended, I adopted. Neither the Semi-Slav nor the Classical Sicilian were openings my Calculus suggested. Doesn't matter. Having a good teacher trumps that. Shankland is 100% my teacher. He might not be for everyone, but for me, he is ideal.
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| Oh captain my captain |
And I know I'm not alone here. On Chessable alone, IM Alex Banzea, IM Christoph Sielecki and IM Yuri Krykun all have very enthusiastic fans. Their teaching style resonates with people, and people buy their courses not just because they want to play the opening but because they are the instructors.
This also meshes with my experience outside chess. My favourite classes at school, coincidentally, all had my favourite teachers. The reverse is also true: I've had really interesting subjects ruined by really bad teachers. Finding really good instruction makes everything else irrelevant. It is the ultimate factor.
Admittedly, this doesn't help a new student much. You can't tell if any given instructor is right for you. Common opinion only gets you so far. (IM Sielecki is near universally praised, but I tried one course, didn't understand what all the fuss was about and had lousy practical results.) This can lead to randomly hopping from course to course, instructor to instructor, until you find someone that clicks. I don't know a way around this problem.
Perhaps I can conclude by saying that finding a good teacher makes nothing else matter. If you find someone, celebrate, do a cartwheel, and enjoy the feeling that you'll never need to search for an opening again. Until then, you can rely on the factors I originally mentioned to filter out unlikely openings and focus on what matters.
Conclusion
Picking an opening repertoire based on the common question, "What fits my chess style?" never seemed to give good advice. In 2019, I proposed a different method, where you rank openings based on different factors and then focus on what you value most. This works, but I've added two caveats.
First, the variation (or even sub-variation) within an opening matters; you can pick the right opening but the wrong flavour. Second, the right instructor makes learning much more effective. If you find your ideal teacher, you can disregard my Calculus and learn any opening. A good teacher is the ultimate factor.
I will end with the usual caveat that most people spend too much time on openings, and most people switch openings too frequently. Guilty as charged. If you develop an opening repertoire, learn it and never abandon it, then you never need to study openings again. Maybe a light refresher now and then, but you are otherwise free to devote all your study time to what really matters. That's a comforting thought.
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