Every beginner has heard this a thousand times: don't worry about opening theory, just learn opening principles. That's great and all, and it's true ... but then you sit down at a game and have no idea what to do next. It's literally move two and you are thinking on your own. Is that really the right approach?
Of course not. Having no repertoire is silly, but so is the other extreme, spending dozens of hours learning detailed theory. There has to be a happy middleground, and there is. I'm going to lay-out the elements of an ideal beginner's repertoire. If a particular resource doesn't check all of these boxes, then it's probably not for beginners:
- Plan Based
- Pithy
- Principled
1: Plan Based
If you are a beginner, chess is hard enough as it is. The whole purpose of a repertoire is to simplify your life in the opening. The simplest way to do this is through a plan. Here's a concrete example. A surprisingly large number of online players play a fianchetto-system as Black every game. It looks something like this:
Most people play this because it cuts down on theory, as you just play the same five moves every game. I think that's misguided, but whatever, let's deal with it. There are literally dozens of options, but here's what I propose, the 150 Attack:
First, you reinforce the center with Nc3 and f3, then you prepare to castle Queenside with Be3 and Qd2, and then you are going to throw your pawns at Black's King in the middlegame. The basic idea is to open the h-file, play Bh6 to exchange Bishops, and then use your heavy pieces to launch a big attack.
That's it. That's the entire plan. Everything else is just details. You can learn them, but you don't need them. This is all you need. You can go and play this right now.
Do you see the power of this? You don't need to memorize different move orders. You don't need detailed theory. You just need to know one thing: if Black does a Kingside fianchetto set-up, we reach this set-up and then follow this plan. As long as you know the plan, you know what to do. You might not do it perfectly, but at least you know what you should be doing.
You can do this for basically any opening. Want a plan against the Sicilian? Here you go, the Grand Prix Attack:
The arrows might not be as clear as I'd like, but the idea is simple. First, we get our set-up, playing Nc3 and f4. We will complete our development with normal moves, Nf3, Bc4 and 0-0. In the middlegame, we plan on attacking the Kingside, starting with Qe1-h4, and then our attack kicks into high gear with an eventual f5.
I can simplify that even further: play Nc3 + f4, develop normally, and in the middlegame aim your pieces at the Kingside and look to push f5. That's your plan, and it doesn't change if Black plays ...e6 or ...d6 instead of ...Nc6 or if he puts a Bishop on e7 or g7. You don't care. Follow the plan.
"But Smithy, Stockfish says other openings are better..."
Who cares? First, Stockfish isn't playing the game, you are. Second, the purpose isn't to play the "best" moves, whatever that means. Our goal is to know what to do. If your opponent plays something, just ask, can I still play this plan? As long as the answer is yes, then do it. Simple.
And that's the ultimate goal. We are simplifying things. We are taking the mystery out of the opening. You don't have to think hard on every move. Follow the plan, get a good position, then play chess. That's exactly what beginners need to do.
"But Smithy, that's technically not the 150 Attack. The 150 Attack is actually..."
Who cares? The name doesn't matter. You can call it the "Crazy Crab Pincher Attack" if it helps you remember it. That's all the name is for: to help you remember the set-up. Make-up your own name if you want. It's more fun that way.
But seriously, nobody pays more attention to opening names than beginners. I've seen chess forums littered with posts that say, "Any thoughts on the Venus Fly Trap variation?", mostly by people rated under 1000, and its mostly other people under 1000 that respond. Somehow they all know every opening name and can spout on it at length and are still rated under 1000.
Don't worry about names. If it's important, you'll hear it again. Focus on the plan.
2: Pithy (eg, Compact)
I know, "pithy" doesn't really make sense, but I'm a sucker for alliteration. Anyway, the point: a beginner repertoire should be no bigger than necessary. The smaller the better. This logically follows from the above: you only need plans for the most common positions you will see. You don't need to learn anything else.
If your repertoire is small, then you can hold it in your hand. You have a hope of understanding it and actually using it in a game. As a bonus, the shorter it is, the less work you need to do and the more time you can focus on doing anything else than studying an opening.
The big enemy of "pithyness" tends to be move orders. A lot of authors place great emphasis here, but it is overkill for beginners. For example, look at this:
Black has at least four options here. In general, Black wants to play all of these moves, and different move orders have different nuances. Chess authors, whose job is to find the best moves, try to exploit these different nuances, and they might offer different moves against each of them.
That might be "best" from an objective computer-based sense, but it flies completely against the idea of a pithy, compact repertoire. It's the equivalent of learning four different plans for the same position. That's work. That's more to remember and more to forget. Ideally, we want to avoid this. Once you move beyond beginner level, sure, explore these ideas and expand your opening arsenal. As a beginner, though, you should build that firm, compact foundation. Start with as few plans as possible and build from there (rather than starting with more options than you can handle).
3: Principled
If you are reading this, you surely know me for my chessable course on opening principles. This may come across as biased, but here we go: you want your repertoire to follow the opening principles as closely as possible.
Why? Because if you ever forget or mix-up your plan, or if you opponent stops your plan, you always have the opening principles to fall back on. Can't do your normal attack? Then develop your pieces, control the center and castle. It always works.
Many beginners like to avoid the "normal" openings and play something off-beat. For example, 1.b3:
This clearly meets two of my criteria: it is plan-based (mostly using the Bb2 to pressure e5) and pithy (generally not many different set-ups or "plans within plans"). Where it falls short, though, is with the principles. It doesn't directly fight for the center and thus concedes a lot of space. As a result, "normal" development, such as Nc3, is often a mistake, or at least suboptimal. You are more likely to reach positions where the fundamental principles offer less guidance.
I'm not saying 1.b3 is bad, nor am I saying you shouldn't play it. I'm saying, ideally, a perfect beginner repertoire should be principled. The more you deviate from that, the less the principles can guide you. You may have to rely on detailed, concrete analysis more. Case in point, look at the stats for the 1.b3 LTR on Chessable:
In order to have a "complete" b3 repertoire, you need to learn more theory than most other courses. Obviously, this is overkill and we should not go down this rabbithole, certainly not as a beginner. Fortunately, you can avoid almost all of this by a) being satisfied with good plans rather than perfect moves, and b) relying on principles.
4: Bonus, Punish Mistakes
As I've mentioned in my work on miniature games, being able to identify and then punish mistakes is a skill. A repertoire should alert you to common mistakes. This hones your killer instinct and lets capitalize on them.
There are two annoying trends in chess content, each existing on opposite ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, you have countless YouTube videos devoted to various trap. A trap, by definition, involves your opponent making a mistake. Learning these can be great, but the focus of most YouTube videos is to give you a trap for trap's sake. It's a single thing to remember rather than a part of a bigger plan. This ends up being no different than memorizing any other piece of theory, and thus has limited effectiveness.
On the other extreme, we have Chessable and it's annoying habit of relegating mistake to "clickables." The "trainable" line generally includes GM or computer analysis, and the natural human mistakes are relegated to sidelines. As a result, you cannot train the very moves that you as a beginner are most likely to see in a game. Again, very limited effectiveness.
Great, thanks for telling me that ...Bc5 is a mistake. Sure would be nice if there existed a way to train these opening mistakes... maybe on a website dedicated to opening training... nah, that's silly.
Anyway, rant over. If you play beginners, they are going to make mistakes. If you know some of the most frequent or tempting mistakes in advance, that can only help you. Don't dwell on this aspect: the plans are clearly doing the heavy lifting. Knowing common mistakes, though, is the icing on a really delicious cake.
Conclusion
There you go. Beginners can navigate the opening successfully, if not perfectly, by following some principled pithy plans. That's it. That's all you need, at least as a beginner. Honestly, looking at my own experience, this can last you well into intermediate status. You might need to refine these plans, make them more in-depth and covering more nuance, but the core idea is the same.
And did you notice a word that I largely avoided using? Theory. I basically ignored it, which is apt because that's what most beginners do. There's nothing "wrong" with theory, but it's not what you need. In fact, I can say this with confidence: if you get really comfortable with these sorts of plans, then eventually learning the theory of these positions will be so much easier and make so much more sense. Ultimately, theory is just the most accurate way to execute these plans, and you'll be able to appreciate that much more once you have lots of practical experience in those positions.
I will add that, unfortunately, most opening resources put far more emphasis on move-by-move analysis than they do on offering principled pithy plans. There's not much I can about that, but if you are studying or watching content, keep you mind focused on the plan. Extract that, and you have taken the most valuable part of the opening.
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