How I Choose My Openings — Guest Post by Sam Asaka
I have asked Sam Asaka from The Road To Infinity to write a guest post. Sam is rated 2170 FIDE and is writing many useful articles about chess improvement here on Substack, so if you haven’t yet subscribed do it now!
Since around the age of 13-14, openings have always been a relative strength of mine.
For a long time, my process was quite simple — I would buy some book or course on an opening I was interested in studying — and then absolutely devour the thing.
(For example:
In late 2017, I read the entire ‘Grandmaster Repertoire 1A - 1. d4 - The Catalan’, cover-to-cover in a week.
In mid 2019, I also had nearly memorized all 1000 trainable variations in the ‘Keep It Simple: 1.d4’ Chessable course, in about 2 weeks)
I would copy the repertoire — line for line — and then religiously play it at every given opportunity.
In fact, for most players, I would recommend this approach (not to the extreme I did, necessarily) for their first opening repertoire.
However, these days, I do things a bit differently.
It’s pretty rare for me to buy some sort of opening book/database/course.
Even if I do, I use them as more of a reference — from which I pick and choose what I like, and do not like.
This is very important.
My Three Criteria
More recently, whenever I decide upon playing an opening (or opening variation), there are three main criteria that I look at:
Objective Quality
Congruency With Style
Relative Familiarity
Objective Quality
This used to be the biggest factor that I would base my selection of opening/opening variation on.
I was obsessed with the little numbers on the screen displaying ‘+0.42’, or ‘+.60’, or ‘+(insert number)’ — which would to me indicate an opening ‘success’ with the White pieces.
And with the Black pieces, I was obsessed with getting that sucker as close to ‘0.00’ as possible — indicating that I had successfully equalized out of the opening.
While I definitely took this robotic approach to an extreme in my teenage years — it is nonetheless still one of the main factors I take into account when choosing my opening lines.
(And it should be one of your’s — if you want a reliable opening repertoire.)
But moreover — what this is really about, is playing in a principled manner.
I.e., you could argue that it doesn’t really matter what opening you pick — since everything leads to equality.
But, that narrative has some clear issues with it.
Let’s take the French Defense for example:
You could try and argue that the Main Line (3.Nc3) is no better than the Exchange Variation (3.exd5).
Objectively — if you dig deep enough, that may just be true.
(Chess is a draw, after all.)
However, 3.Nc3 is definitely the more principled move — keeping more tension and complexity in the position.
Because of this — the potential to obtain an advantage is also much greater.
To reiterate, though — this isn’t necessarily about learning tons and tons of theory, but rather — playing with the intent of posing problems (objectively and/or practically) to the opponent, right from the very start.
Congruency With Style
This is a topic that requires careful handling.
For some players, the discussion of style will be quite relevant.
For others, it will merely serve as mental masturbation.
As a general rule of thumb — if you are under ~1500 OTB, forget about finding the ‘right’ opening for your ‘style’.
In all likelihoods, you have not developed one yet.
Choose any reasonable opening, and stick with it for at least 6 months.
However, once a player starts to develop their own style of play — this should be taken into account when creating an opening repertoire.
Even as I began to grow into a fairly decent player (reaching +2000 FIDE), I severely neglected this aspect of my opening selection.
I relied heavily upon “higher authorities” to dictate my opening choices, and lacked the ability to think for myself.
At heart, I was a ‘positional player’ who thrived in simple positions.
Yet, sizeable portions of my repertoire were as razor-sharp as could be — a far cry from ‘simple’.
For example, vs the Slav Defense, there was a period where I was very insistent on playing the main line with 3.Nf3 and 4.Nc3.
Arguably, also the most principled approach — simply developing both knights to their most active squares.
However, upon closer inspection — the lines can rapidly devolve into sharp complications.
Especially, in the Classical Slav (4…dxc4), and the Semi-Slav (4…e6).
Here are a couple positions that would typically arise from these lines:
These days, I play the ‘Slow Slav’, with 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.e3, about 95% of the time.
It tends to lead to more of a slow positional struggle (which I like), with relatively little forced theory (which I don’t mind) — in spite of it’s pseudo mainline status.
On top of that — I would argue it is probably just as objectively strong as the main line with 3.Nf3 and 4.Nc3.
If you can pick between multiple lines of similar objective strength — play the one that is most congruent with your style.
I should also note that I like this line significantly more than it’s slightly more popular cousin line: 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.e3.
Despite a seemingly trivial difference — there is a “problem” with this variation, in that Black can play 4…e6 and go into the Semi-Slav.
Some players may be fine with this — but it’s not to my taste.
With the Slow-Slav, White can somewhat avoid the typical Semi-Slav positions with 5.b3 (with the knight on c3, this runs into annoying …Bb4 moves).
It’s certainly not bad for Black — but it’s also not something that many Semi-Slav players are completely comfortable with either.
The more consistent approach with the pure Slav is to play something like 4…Bf5 or 4…Bg4 — getting the bishop outside the pawn chain.
However, I am also satisfied with the strategically complicated battles that ensue in these positions — where White is often able to harass the LSB and obtain the bishop pair.
As a comparison to the mainline positions I showed earlier, here are some of the common types of positions I get from the Slow Slav:
Maybe it’s not for you, but this is my kind of chess.
To play devil’s advocate, however — there is also merit in playing openings (or opening lines) which push you to play in a way that is outside your usual style of playing.
Understand, however — you will almost certainly face a rating dip in the initial stages of playing such an opening.
That is not an inherently bad thing, as the long-term benefit to your chess should arguably outweigh any short-term hits to your rating.
Relative Familiarity
The last important concept, is what I would like to call is ‘Relative Familiarity’.
In other words — how well are you going to know any given opening variation, compared to your opponents.
It was a big reason that I employed the Caro-Kann as my main weapon vs 1.e4 for so long.
It wasn’t necessarily that 1.e4 players didn’t study the Caro at all — but most didn’t know it anywhere near as well as their pet lines vs 1…e5, the Sicilian, and French — at least from my experiences.
In other words — relatively speaking, I was much more familiar with the opening than my opponents were.
This gave myself a huge practical advantage.
In 2023, I’ve been mainly playing the Philidor (1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 e5) against 1.e4 — in large part due to relative familiarity.
Even among some of the stronger players I’ve faced, none of them seemed to have studied the opening at any meaningful depth.
In many cases, that more than compensates for being slightly inferior to other main line openings, from an objective standpoint.
This is also something that 1.Nf3 and 1.c4 players get to experience the benefits of — as many players (especially ~U2000) have never invested any serious time into studying those openings (at least, in comparison to 1.e4 and 1.d4).
However, just like the first factor I talked about, this can also be taken to an extreme.
Take, for example, the Latvian Gambit:
You might argue that it suits your style, and that you also have a high degree of relative familiarity with this opening.
Both of those might be true, but it does not address the greater issue — that the opening is virtually refuted — rendering both of the other factors practically useless.
Concluding
Ultimately, openings are a highly personal aspect of the game.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution that I can give.
Nonetheless, to summarize, here is my general parting advice:
a) For Players U1600 OTB:
Do NOT try to be fancy with your openings. Play simple, principled moves. I generally would recommend 1.e4, and sticking to classical openings with the Black pieces (i.e. vs 1.d4 — Queen’s Gambit Declined, not hypermodern ones like the King’s Indian).
If it helps, get an opening book/course for your White and Black repertoire that is level-appropriate (very important). Treat it like the bible and follow every suggestion religiously.
b) For Players 1600-2000 OTB:
At this level, you have most likely mastered the basics. Thus, if you so desire, you can start branching out to more strategically complicated openings (i.e. The English as White, King’s Indian vs 1.d4, etc.)
Start looking through every major line in your repertoire, and ask yourself “do I like the positions I get from playing this variation?”. If the answer is “no”, you either need to study it more deeply, or change it to something more congruent with your style.
I would still recommend mostly relying on stronger players’ analysis for your repertoire. You can diversify your sources a bit more in this bracket, though — picking out what you like, and don’t like from each one.
c) For Players +2000 OTB:
The only real change I would add here is that a lot of opening work should become more independent. It’s fine to use the popular books that everyone else has read — but try to come up with your own ideas/lines that aren’t as well covered in chess literature.
Also, don’t fall into the trap of believing that the moment you hit 2000 — that openings are everything. They’re really not, and you need to work just as hard (if not harder) at everything else in your game — if you want to improve.
I hope you found the newsletter useful. If you have any questions for Sam please leave a comment.
/Martin
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I like the idea of changing approach based on rating. I was just writing something similar
Great article. Thanks!