Chess Openings: What I Wish I'd Learned First

The best first opening isn't the strongest — it's the one whose plan you can explain. Why beginners should learn the Italian before Carlsen's Ruy Lopez.

For a long time I thought learning openings meant memorizing them. I'd copy a line ten moves deep, feel very prepared, and then my opponent would play something on move three that wasn't in my notes, and the whole scaffolding fell down at once. I had the moves. I had no idea what they were for.

That gap — between knowing the moves and knowing what they serve — is the whole subject. It's why beginners forget openings the instant the board deviates. Not because their memory failed. Because there was nothing underneath the memory to hold it up.

So I want to reframe the question everyone starts with. It isn't which opening is best. It's which opening teaches you something you can carry into the middle of the game — and by that measure, a beginner is far better served by the Italian Game than by memorizing Magnus Carlsen's Ruy Lopez.

The 'big three' everyone means — and what they're really teaching you

When people say the big three, they usually mean the Ruy Lopez, the Italian Game, and the Sicilian Defense. Sometimes the list stretches to a top five and picks up the Caro-Kann and the Queen's Gambit. Fine. But a list of names is a list of clothes on a rack. It tells you nothing about how any of them will drape on you.

What these openings actually teach are the opening principles — control the center, develop your pieces, get your king safe — dressed up in different silhouettes. The Ruy Lopez pressures Black's center by leaning on the knight defending it. The Italian aims a bishop straight at the weakest square near Black's king. The Sicilian refuses the symmetrical fight altogether and plays for an imbalance.

The Endgame Journal collects our writing on openings, tactics, endgames, and the habits that separate players who improve from players who plateau. Every article is written by people who teach chess, not by a content farm.

Chess Openings: What I Wish I'd Learned First | Endgame Society