The Chess Openings I Wish I'd Learned First

Everyone tells beginners to memorize chess openings. I'd rather you learn two or three deeply enough to know the plan when your prep runs out around move six.

I once opened a game with a line I'd read the night before, played the first five moves from memory, and then sat there on move six with no idea what I was doing. My pieces were out. My king was safe. And I could not tell you what any of it was for.

That is the trap nobody warns beginners about. Everyone tells you to learn chess openings, hands you a list of the famous ones, and lets you believe the work is memorizing move orders. So you collect a dozen, half-learned, and every one of them abandons you the moment your opponent plays something you didn't prepare.

Here is what I wish someone had said to me first. Most openings are the same three habits — take the center, get your pieces out, tuck your king away — dressed in different clothes. Learn the habits, learn two or three openings deeply enough to know their plans, and you'll play better than the person who owns twelve and can't play any of them past move four.

What people actually mean by 'the big three'

When people talk about the big three, they usually mean the openings that show up most at the top: something with 1.e4 and a quiet buildup, something with 1.d4 and a slower squeeze, and the Sicilian, which is what Black plays when Black wants a real fight. If you searched for the top five openings, you'd get a longer version of the same list — the Ruy Lopez, the Sicilian, the Caro-Kann, the Queen's Gambit, the Italian.

The list is real. It's also nearly useless to a beginner, because it ranks openings by how they perform in the hands of people who understand them completely. That's a different question from which one you should learn.

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.

The Chess Openings I Wish I'd Learned First | Endgame Society