Winning Chess Openings

Openings will help you develop a solid understanding of opening principles that you can apply to every game you play -without having to memorise a dizzying array of tedious and lengthy opening lines.

Start every game with confidence!

The two greatest challenges for beginning chess players are not only to survive the openings phase, but also to choose appropriate attack and defense formations in the process. Winning Chess Openings shows you how to do both. In Yasser Seirawan's entertaining, easy-to-follow style, you're shown formations that can be used with other White or Black pieces.

Winning Chess Openings explains how to:

- Build a safe house for a king

- Estimate losses of ten moves or fewer

- Utilise the elements: time, force, space and pawn structure

- Plan strategy based on time-tested opening principles

- Employ a defense for Black against any White opening

- Apply an opening for White used by World Champions

Winning Chess Openings will help you develop a solid understanding of opening principles that you can apply to every game you play - without having to memorise a dizzying array of tedious and lengthy opening lines.

Most books have a story, and this one is no different. The Microsoft Press Winning Chess book series has inspired a large number of letters from my readers to me and to Microsoft Press. Before I continue, I'd like to offer sincere thanks to each and every one of you who took the time to write a letter! They are most appreciated. Most of your letters asked Microsoft Press to continue publishing more books in the series. Through your letters, dear readers, I earned a yummy lunch and the question "Could further titles be added to the series?"

Since book four, Winning Chess Brilliancies, I'd had three years to think about that question and I heartily recommended two further titles: Winning Chess Endings and Winning Chess Openings. I was very enthusiastic about an endings book because I've been carrying around thoughts for many years about how endings should be presented. This is an awkward area to study, but it remains one of the most important aspects of the game. After all, what good is it to work like a dog to establish an advantage when you can't capitalize upon your efforts?

Telling a student, "Study the ending!"-even in my sternest voice- doesn't do that much good. Most endgame books are plainly boring! The way the material has been presented, such endgame books serve as excellent aids for getting to sleep! I felt that a new approach was called for and I eagerly presented my ideas to Microsoft Press.

"And what about an opening book?" I was asked. Well yes, there was a huge problem here also. Most beginning players pound away in the opening with little rhyme or reason. Endgames are rare for such players and middle game and opening wipeouts are the rule of the day. "Well why not start there?" asked my acquisitions editor, Kim Fryer. Why not indeed? The problem was that I was much further along with my thoughts about an endings book than an openings one. Like a misplayed combination, somehow I seemed to have transposed moves!

My publishers seemed quite concerned for those lost souls who were struggling their way through their opening losses. "Let's get them through the opening first," seemed to be the sentiment. Book five was destined to be an opening book. The first book, Play Winning Chess, was intended as an all-purpose primer-an introduction to the vast world of chess. Books two and three, Winning Chess Tactics and Winning Chess Strategies, taught tricks and plans and could easily be read out of turn. Book four, Winning Chess Brilliancies, was a different sort of work. Brilliancies could be appreciated best by being read last. In Brilliancies, all the lessons of the previous works were woven together.

For Winning Chess Openings, the publishers wanted another work that could be read out of turn. This work is written for as broad an audience as the original Play Winning Chess. While Openings focuses upon chess openings, readers will recognize the same lessons and the same principles expounded in all the previous books. Don't expect this book to solve all your chess problems. Instead, expect it to act as a signpost on your road to development as a player.

Now came my problems. Firstly my research confirmed my fears. While there are thousands of books on the openings, I couldn't find one that took the approach I've taken with this book. "What's wrong with that?" you might ask. As a chess grandmaster, I'm constantly amazed to discover (or rather, rediscover) the truth of grandmaster Victor Kortchnoi's statement, "In chess there is nothing new under the sun." A brilliant combination? Stunning opening idea? An ending strategy? Sure enough, your "original" concept was "first tried in Berlin in 1866 by... and tried again in the 1938 USSR team tournament in Odessa by..."

It bears repeating that chess is 1400 years old and that our ancestors were some pretty clever people. Not to mention the folks still kicking today. It seems all but impossible to "discover" something new in chess. As for chess opening books, why, the majority of chess books are written about the openings! Failing to discover a chess book that takes the same approach as this work is perplexing. And what is so novel about the approach of this book? Why nothing more than reciting my very own experiences of what I did right and wrong! Shocking, right?

When I speak to my grandmaster colleagues about their early lessons, I'm astonished to discover how many "identical steps" we took together. Virtually all of my colleagues committed the same errors and discovered or were taught the truths in this book. So why not teach others based on the experience of myself and other elite grandmasters?

The reasons opposing this approach are surprising. Many grandmasters are embarrassed by their earliest efforts. Indeed, they want to forget about these opening losses as quickly as possible. Instead, wonderful myths are created for adoring fans, like "Grandmaster such-and-such learned chess while nursing from his mother. Our hero cast an eye at the board, reached out, and found the winning move that the greatest players of the time couldn't discover without weeks of thought..." Believe me, this nonsense gets spewed through endless pages of chess literature. Unfortunately, the heroes in these works tend to encourage this type of rubbish. "Well, that's not exactly how it happened," our blushing hero would state. "You see, it actually took me a number of reflections to refute the analysis of the former World Champion. You see, my school work and karate studies got in my way and..."

No one likes to remember the first time they burned their fingers on a wicked candle flame. It is the very rare and careful person who hasn't burnt himself or herself. Indeed, it took me a few dozen outings to respect the candle's flame. I really enjoyed playing with the candle's wax on my fingertips. Am I so different? I don't think so!

So speaking as a chess grandmaster, allow me to recite my own firsthand experiences of my failings as a beginner and how the flame of defeat helped guide me in the openings. It is my hope that you will recognize yourself in these passages. Smile to yourself when you see an old pothole that rattled your hubcaps. Before too long, you might discover that a future pothole awaits your entry. If you take my own experiences to heart, you might just miss one that got me.

I've tried to present the material in the order that it was taught to me. In Chapters One and Two, you'll see the stunning chess opening discoveries that I thought of "on my own." My games weren't always pretty, and you'll soon appreciate what a poor player I was. Only after working with experienced chess players-who became my chess teachers-did I learn the classical King Pawn and classical Queen Pawn openings. These are explained in Chapters Three and Four. They are difficult chapters because they both have a "main line" through the chapter. At every single move, a different idea or variation is looked at! This is quite vexing because it seems that we'll never wind our way through the main line. Why did I present this information on the classical openings in this style? Because that's exactly how it was presented to me!

When my teachers took me through the classical openings, they didn't whip through the first dozen moves and proudly state, "So that, Yasser, is the Queen's Gambit Declined!" On the contrary, they encouraged me to question every move, including the first one. I wasn't being asked to memorize an opening; I was taught to understand the logic of the move. Having a young inquiring mind, I wanted to know why a move was good or bad. These questions were always answered, provided that I properly framed my questions according to opening principles. I soon learned that nearly every logical move had an opening name! Thus I learned a large number of names. The "Fried Liver Attack" was a favorite, whereas the "Nimzo-Indian, Rubinstein Variation" hardly rolls of the tongue. Thus, I teach the classical openings in the same manner: by questioning every move and looking at the alternatives while trying to stay on a main line.

Modern openings and defenses are dealt with differently. In Chapters Five and Six, I no longer follow a main line. Instead I describe each defense in its own section. In this way, you can judge each defense on its own merits and failings. I've made judgements on nearly all the defenses given, and I leave it up to you to discover if I'm right or wrong. After I learned the classics and the principles, it seemed to me that a fair number of modern defenses violate the principles. They do. Principles are only guides; they are not rules. Do not cling to principles as the sole answer to a given position. They are there to stimulate you to think up the right move or plan.

The amount of theory of chess openings is overwhelming. It seemed that I was always a step behind my opponent on the latest opening moves. (And yes, my karate lessons were getting in the way of my chess studies.) There was only one solution: to try to avoid the sharpest theoretical variations and instead create a solid hiding place for my King. Once that had been done, I turned to dealing with the center, finding a plan, and conducting possible attacks. These lessons are contained in Chapters Seven, Eight, and Nine. Beginning players will always get wiped out by more experienced opponents. One of the major reasons is that the King lacks protection. These chapters are specifically designed to prevent all further short losses. You'll be taught to have a safe King and you will be well supplied with the insights of classical and modern openings and defenses.

Throughout the book, I've diligently tried to state the names of the openings, defenses, variations, and attacks that I describe. This has led to a number of awkward moments. The word opening often refers to what White is doing and defense refers to what Black is doing, but sometimes a favored variation as White is tried with the colors reversed. "I like this opening as White, so I'll play it as Black!" Of course, the converse is also true. A difficult one is the King's Indian Defense, a line of defense favored by a number of World Champions when playing the Black pieces. But if White adopts the King's Indian Defense setup, is it a King's Indian Defense or a King's Indian Opening? In such cases the term reversed is often used.

Although the words opening, defense, variation, and attack are often used interchangeably, I've tried to reserve opening for White's play and defense for Black's play. With a game that's 1400 years old, expect some strange nomenclature to have been incorporated along the way. As always, I wish you the very best of success in your endeavors and I hope that this book will stimulate you into buying further books that are more specific about the openings and defenses that you might enjoy.

Introduction