STOP PLAYING These 4 Chess Openings

QGA actually is a great opening for Black, much better than Countergambit or Chigorin.

That's sadly and brutally honest

As an over the board 1400ish player I'd say there is nothing wrong with playing the Najdorf as an intermediate player, I use it with pretty good success as you mostly need to know the main lines of 7. Be3 and Bg5, e5 h5 against h3 and more general ideas and setups against the rest. Also, if your opponent is less prepared than you, it's often easy to find why a certain move is not part of the theory and exploit it. Currently my repertoire is King's Indian Attack and Vienna for white and Dutch, Najdorf, Dragon and Kan for black, highly recommend these to intermediate club players like myself from my personal experience

I used to play the Pirc Defence. Unfortunately, white has lots of options against that too.

The lopez works though with low level idiots

So, tactical > positional?

I was really surprised he recommended avoiding a specific line of the Sicilian, and not just avoiding the Sicilian altogether. As he goes on to mention, there are just so many anti-Sicilian lines you have to be prepared for, on top of needing to know how to play your favorite mainline in the Open. I avoid playing it as black for the same reason I don't play the Ruy Lopez as white.

Levy , I know 80% of chess players are below 1000 rated.
But still, can you please make some videos where you treat your audience like they are experienced?
Whenever I watch your vids, I feel like I am watching videos meant for 800 elo.

You talk about the Ruy Lopez?
Easy! I have learnt The Berlin endgame ( and its 3 variations with h3, Rd1+, and Nc3.
I habe learnt He Chigorin variation and the really underrated Archangel✨ Variation for black.

Anyway, my point is that if you just treat the audience like they know some of the chess concepts, even they will feel a bit smarter.
I hope you get the point.

Well, turns out ive been trying to climb the everest the whole time 😭

i am 1500 and after this video i looked for good beginner openings for my friend(900) and most sites really recommend french and sicilian as top 2 for beginners😂

Can we start a Go Fund Me to help Levy afford sleeves for his t-shirt?

I like the schlieman defence against the ruy lopez. But the ruylopez is much to co.plicated

Sicilian Najdorf player 🗿

Bro sicilian become indians king

I've just started getting into chess. Awesome videos sir.

"You don't even know how to make toast" haha - that's the funniest line I've heard today!

So the best Sicilian is to just play the kings Indian to begin with 😂

Against 1. d4 I am loving c6 and just playing a Caro Kann, in most games the opponent thinks you are being an idiot and just plays e4, then after d5 it is literally just a Caro, but your opponent is a d4 player. Even if they don't play 2. e4 you basically play a semi slav but with your bishop actually developed and you wind up essentially playing London as black.

i love the king's gambit even tho im like 500
its just fun

Terrible video.
Ruy lopez is the best opening to learn.
Gajewski has an amazing chessable lifetime repertoire for 1e4 with ruy lopez as the focus.

As for the english, kinda have to agree there... Because why would you play the english when you can play the ruy lopez 😂😂

Nimzo-indiam for life..have yet to see a d4 player play 2c4 and that's probably your fault for convincing all the low elo d4 players to play the London system..

Ruy lopez exhange isnt bad for learning. I went 900-1400 and now i am between 1400-1600 playing more traditional lines

I had played Ruy lopez for myself and I have to admit that it was complex so I lost many and about english, I won none with that opening

I remember looking up the Sicilian in the Batsford Chess Opening book when it first came out in the 80's, and even then, a sixth or a fifth of the book was dedicated to the Sicilian. Some lines were all book for 20 moves!!!! That was 40 years ago. I never played it in tournaments just for that reason alone, way way toooo much memorization. For white I like the KIA, and for black, the Pirc or KID, depending on what white does.

Moore Jennifer Hall David Moore Kevin

with black against e4 any other recomendation apart the kan ?

Bongcloud is the best opening for white and black i highly think u should play it.

I play the Ruy Lopez with an elo below 2700, the Ruy Lopez is fine as long as you know the main attacking ideas.

the English is the best opening

I create my own names for openings…. Mortal Kombat character names work best…The Lue Kang Opening😂😂😂😂

298-400

Thank you very much . I didnt know such openings are complicated to understand

I feel like I’ve had more success playing ruy Lopez over the Italian at ~650

As white the queens gambit is only fun if they accept.

Bro why I used to love to destroy ppl with queen's gambit like I never ever learned anything only 1 openening nothing for 9 yrs of from 6 to 15 I only played this

No english, okay i will just play the bird then

I nevr encounter the queens gambit cuz i play the dutch defense and it works out pretty good

I started playing chess with the Ruy Lopez because I heard you should fight for the center and it seemed like the best option for that. I still think it’s a fantastic opening for that, maybe the best. But I have learned that Gotham is correct, you can get beat down by opening prep and it’s very frustrating. That said, I don’t regret it, a lot of the basic principles and concepts from the Ruy Lopez can be applied to other openings. So I’d say yeah your win rate will suffer when you run into people who know opening theory but I think it’s overall good to know.

wut about the caro kahn advance?

I'll save you guys a bunch of time and theory when choosing openings: The d4 square is 100% of the time occupied by a white pawn during every single winning white GM game. LITERALLY 100%. For black it's more like d5, while close to, not exactly 100%, so I would just stick with d4 as the target, knowing you'll play d5 as black, anyway. So, targeting it as black or taking it as white should be a top priority for an opening. I actually came up with the paulson Sicillian as my standard black defense with this idea (bishop protects the c5 pawn and you go e6 instead of e5 so that you can protect your d pawn when you pressure with it. About d4 for white, the London seems to be very confusing to players who expect d4 to be played instantly, and it has enough options to be viable against almost all defenses (thanks Danny Rensch.) If you're not sure what to do with it as you play then build a position around e4 after playing the London.

lol i played like that, most of my games.

Vienna or Karo

The more I climb in Chess the more I realize that this video gives very bad advice to people, because while it's true that it's hard to build consistency with openings, all you have to do is know more than your opponent. I climbed from 1100 to 1300 in the Spanish and while occasionally I get hit with something trappy out of it, 80% of the time my opponent will play either mainlines or natural looking moves and in an openings like that, knowing the common positions better than your opponent will win you far more games than the few opponents who will have trap lines memorized. Also, playing the Spanish has also taught me how to play against the Spanish against people who play it badly. I can't count the number of times I played someone 1200 or below who thought he won a free pawn after snatching my knight on move 3 and getting hit with the queen fork. It's basically a free advantage a fourth of the time.