What are Chess Opening Principles? 3 Goals in 10 moves!
When you are first starting out in chess, knowing opening principles are far more important than any particular opening family. I’m going to teach you an opening system for beginners for I’ve developed over years of playing and coaching!
In the first ten moves of a chess game, players should achieve three goals; activate your pieces towards the center, touch your rooks (have them defending each other), and castle. You can summarize these three goals as “ACT” (Activate, touch rooks, castle).
Openings are a necessary evil in chess. Bobby Fischer famously hated openings, which lead him to create a variation of chess (called Fischer Random Chess or Chess960) which relied on opening principles rather than memorizing specific lines. Let’s look at each of these opening goals in greater detail!
“A” Activate Your Pieces Influencing the Center, “C” Castle, “T” Touch your Rooks
The first letter in our system is “A” which represents the goal of “Activate your Pieces influencing the Center.” It should be noted that your “pieces” are not the same thing as your pawns. The pieces are considered what rests on the back row. The first consideration in achieving “A” is considered “complete” when the following have been achieved.
- All pieces have been moved from their starting squares
- All pieces are influencing the center in some way
- You should not move pawns in the opening, except to aid bishops and queens getting into the game
Explaining why control of the center is important is a little beyond the scope of this article. However, just trust every chess master that has ever lived and understand that controlling the center is vitally important. To this end, when you activate the pieces from your back row and into the game, the most important consideration is that they must influence the center! In chess, the “center” can be defined as the four squares e4,d4,e5, and d5.
Remember, you have 10 moves to complete your three goals. Therefore, you should know that moving the same piece multiple times in the opening is a waste of time! Do not try to attack your opponent with just one or two pieces in play. That violates principle four of the 7 Principles of Chess Theory! So, do not move the same piece twice in the first 10 moves unless that piece is being threatened to be captured.
“Moving the same piece multiple times in the opening is a waste of time!”
-Me, I literally just wrote that. But I feel like I need to quote myself so you really understand this.
In order to develop your queen and bishops, you’re going to most likely have to move both of your e and d pawns in some fashion. Therefore, most chess games begin with pawn to e4, or pawn to d4! This achieves multiple things. It grabs the center, allows your queen and bishop a path off their start squares.
The time-tested e4 is a fantastic way to open a game and help you achieve your “ACT” goals. Now let’s think about this logically. I see a lot of beginners always push their flank pawns (the ones in front of their rooks down the board). Also a massive waste of time. It does not contribute, at all, to completing “ACT.” Remember, only pawn moves in the beginning that help you develop pieces off their starting squares, and influencing the center. Or as the old chess adage goes, “one or two pawn moves in the beginning. No more.”
Now, regardless of how black responds we have a few good moves we can begin thinking about. Let’s say black responds with a respectable pawn to e5. Now we want to move our light-square bishop.
Which would be the best square to move it to? Bishop to e2, bishop to d3, bishop to c4, or bishop to b5?
A. Bishop to e2
B. Bishop to d3
C. Bishop to c4
D. Bishop to b5
We can eliminate A, and D right off the bat because they do not influence the center! We are left with option B and option C. Strictly speaking playing B, Bishop to d3 does develop our bishop to a spot where it influences our center and it protects our pawn, it also has a downside. It blocks the d-pawn making it difficult for the other bishop to get into the game where its influencing the center. So C, bishop to c4 is a great second move!
Since black doesn’t fully understand the ACT system, he moves his bishop to e7. Not a terrible move, but simply not consistent with our opening principles. Now we can bring one of our knights into the game. I’m going to allow you to choose between the following.
A. Knight to a3
B. Knight to c3
C. Knight to f3
D. Knight to h3
I sure hope you eliminated A and D right away. Those moves are actually bad. Not only do they not help us at all, but knights on the edge of the board are very weak! Knights are scary when they’re in the center of the board. So now we can choose between B and C. If you choose either one, congrats! You are correct. They’re both great moves. However, I personally would play C, knight to f3. The reason is because knight to c3 (option B) does bring a piece into the game, influencing the center. But knight to f3 brings a piece into the game, influences the center, attacks an enemy piece (the pawn on e5), and clears the way for castling! This rock star move accomplishes four things at the same time! In chess, if a move accomplishes two things at the same time, it’s probably a good move. If it accomplishes 3 or more, it’s probably a great move!
So, let’s go with knight to f3 since it’s a slightly “more correct” move. Again, black not being as wise as we are to the ACT system panics and makes a mistake. He plays bishop to d6 to protect his pawn (he moved the same piece twice in the opening). A much better move would have been bringing his queen side knight into the game while protecting the pawn with knight to c6. Now what should we do? I’ll give you four options.
A. pawn to d3
B. Knight to c3
C. Castle
D. queen to e2
Trick question. These are all perfectly good moves. One of the cool things about chess is that if you play by principles it’s honestly hard to make bad moves! Any of these choices are fine. If you’re not sure what castling is, it’s one of three special moves in chess. The reason pawn to d3 is good is because it protects the pawn, and prepares for the bishop on c1 to enter the game! Let’s go ahead and say we played d3 and black finally decides to get more than one piece in the game by playing knight to f6. We already know that queen to e2, castles, and knight to c3 are totally fine. But I’m going to throw one more move in for you to consider, bishop to g5.
A. knight to c3
B. queen to e2
C. Castles
D. Bishop to g5
Now, you might be tempted to to completely dismiss D, bishop to g5 because it doesn’t control the center. However, I was careful to use the term “influence” the center, not “control” the center. Bishop to g5 most certainly influences the center! How? By removing the black knight’s ability to control the center! That black knight is now pinned. If he moves, the bishop will snap off the queen and have a huge advantage in the game. This move also invites black to make a couple of mistakes! If he were to move his bishop back to e7 to break the pin, not only has he moved his bishop three times, but he left his pawn hanging on e5 which the knight can just take for free! So, once again all of these move choices are great. I have a tendency to play a little aggressive and let my opponent make a lot of mistakes. So I think I’d personally play bishop to g5 here.
Now black castles. Instead of presenting you with four options (because you already know that knight to c3, queen to e2, and castles are all perfectly good moves), I’m going to ask you a yes/no question. Do you think bishop on g5 takes knight on f6 is a good move?
No. In fact it’s a pretty bad move. Why? Well first it violates our “do not move the same piece twice in the opening” principle. Second, it removes a piece you already developed and let’s black develop a piece with a recapture, queen takes bishop on f6! Third, black has a problem to solve. You have his knight pinned and she’s likely to feel some pressure for that. At the very least it’s an annoyance she has to deal with, and you’re solving the problem for her! Keep the pressure on, and stick with the ACT system. Let’s instead castle. After we castle, black plays pawn to h6, tickling our bishop. Now we have an annoying choice. Capture, retreat, or do something else?
Capture? No. See above. It’s a bad move for a lot of reasons. Leave it there? No. We will get taken and then we will be losing! Retreat? Yes. Don’t think of a retreat as cowardly in chess. It’s not. In fact, part of the reason I wanted the bishop there was to coax black into weakening his position a bit (h6 is a move outside the ACT principle!) We can even keep the pin on by playing Bishop to h3 or go back and influence the center with bishop to e3. Both are fine! Let’s play bishop to e3. We are 7 moves in! Only 3 moves left to ACT!
Black responds with knight to c6. Our remaining three moves are easy, really. Queen to e2 (but I like d2 better!) Knight to c3 and rook on a to d1. Our opening set up would look something like this!
We have all of our goals accomplished. In 10 moves we activated our pieces (off their home squares, influencing the center), we have castled, and our rooks are touching (that means they defend each other and nothing is between them!).
