By the time a player becomes a Grand-master, almost all of his training time is dedicated to work on this first phase. The opening is the only phase that holds out the potential for true creativity and doing something entirely new. – Garry Kasparov
In chess, recognized sequences of initial moves are referred to as openings by White, or defenses by Black, but opening is also used as the general term. There are many dozens of different openings, and hundreds of named variants. The Oxford Companion to Chess lists 1,327 named openings and variants including Sicilian Defense, Ruy Lopez, Queen’s Gambit etc.
Best chess opening moves :
This post will be explaining the top 5 best chess opening moves in chess history!
5. The Kings Indian defense
Live by the sword and die by the sword. Sometimes I wonder just how many of these games I can play in the KID before I die of a heart attack. (after defeating Viswanathan Anand at The London Chess Classic 2011) – Hikaru Nakamura
This is one of the oldest openings in history. The origin seems unknown but not its play! It’s the best example of the hyper modern play. Interesting style of the bishop and developed knight and castled king. One of the best chess openings in history.
The second of our popular openings in the Indian family is where Black plays 2…g6. The most popular variation is 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 as in the diagram.
Black has two popular responses.
• 3…Bg7 : King’s Indian Defense
• 3…d5 : Gruenfeld Defense
4. Kings Indian attack
Also known as KIA, the kings Indian attack is one of the most famous chess opening moves in man kind. Possibly originating from the Kings Indian defense, it has been considered also hyper modern like the kings Indian defense but with a extra tempo. Most openings with black that are turned into white openings are highly respected because of extra tempo.
3. The English opening
This is basically a revered Sicilian defense with extra tempo. It can also lead to crazy transpositions. Usually in the English from my experience with it, it’s nothing different than the Sicilian defense except an extra tempo and more ideas to do with it. Still, a great opening and may this live on.
In our top 5 chess opening moves list, we include 1.c4 for: (1) although played less frequently than 1.e4 or 1.d4, it has a considerable following; (2) the most popular response leads back to the 1.d4 openings; and (3) none of the alternate responses are as popular.
2. The Dutch defense
Among top grand-masters the Dutch is a rare defense, which is good reason to play it! It has not been studied very deeply by many opponents, and theory, based on a small number of ‘reliable’ games, must be rather unreliable. – Bent Larsen
This has to be one of the most aggressive responses towards d4. This can turn into crazy tactical wild complicated and difficult positions. It looks ugly since black is exposing his weakness on the diagonal. But usually it’s not that bad and when you castle, you have a good rook on the F file.
1. The STONEWALL ATTACK
This is the greatest opening of all time. In fact without this opening, No repertoires have been discovered so far to consider this opening bad when in fact world champions have played it before and some still do.
We love this closed in stone like built system and we just wish it was analyzed and widespread more often. This system can get so locked and closed, that even the mightiest chess computers have a hard time playing against it. This opening is truly the king of the chess openings and it achieved the top spot in our top 5 best chess opening moves of all time.
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If you want to know why chess is not included in Olympics, check “Sports not in Olympic“.
