What Good Opening Prep Really Looks Like

There are no prizes for memorizing random moves

As I wrote last week, memorizing opening moves is easy, but this is only part of the story. Using opening preparation effectively as part of an overall strategy for winning chess games requires a clear vision for how you’re going to pose problems to your opponent. The tricky part is choosing which moves to memorize, or, even more importantly, which moves not to memorize.

Let’s look at an example. In one of my student’s games, his opponent chose to start out with a dubious gambit.

1. d4 e5 2. dxe5 f6

In the game, White made the natural decision to capture the pawn.

3. exf6 Nxf6

Objectively, Black doesn’t have enough compensation for the pawn, but it’s not so easy to prove in a practical game. Black has easy developing moves in a position he’s probably played many times before, whereas White’s plan isn’t obvious. It will be a long time before the extra pawn makes its presence felt.

From this point on, Black played a faultless game. When my student slipped and allowed a tactical opportunity, his opponent seized it immediately. Clearly, the outcome of the opening and ultimately the game left something to be desired. We had to figure out how to improve our preparation.

Coming from a poker background, I put a lot of stock in taking my opponents out of their comfort zone. I want to get inside their heads, figure out what they want, and not give it to them. It’s only one game, but we already have a clear picture of this opponent. He wants to play coffee house chess with easy development and a quick attack against our king. If that involves sacrificing material, he doesn’t mind in the least – he might even prefer it. So I want to give him the opposite: rather than letting him play easy developing moves and start an attack, I want to force him to defend in an awkward position. If that means playing with equal material, I’m fine with that.

It’s possible to take this thought process too far. While there is some value in deception, chess as a game is less about tricking your opponent, and far more about doing things that make sense on a chess board. If your opponent offers an unsound sacrifice, sometimes you have to take it and prove them wrong. But in this case, my intuition and the engine are happily aligned.

Rather than taking the pawn, a better move is 3. e4!

With this move, we’re controlling the center and opening lines for our bishop and queen. By opening up the queen, we even indirectly defend the pawn on e5, since now fxe5 would run into Qh5+, winning back the pawn with interest.

Black will probably play 3... Nc6, developing a knight and trying to get us to take on f6. It’s hard to see what else they can do: most of their other pieces are blocked in. Here we can continue our policy of prioritizing development over material with 4. Nf3. In the standoff over who will resolve the pawn tension, Black will have to give way. We have no shortage of good developing moves: Bc4, Nc3, 0-0, etc. In contrast, Black’s position is cramped by the pawn on f6, blocking the knight from developing to its natural square. They’re going to have to take the pawn sooner or later, and they should probably do it immediately with 4... fxe5. Now we can continue developing with 5. Bc4.

What we’ve got now is something resembling a King’s Pawn opening, but with White’s d-pawn and Black’s f-pawn removed. This is massively in our favor. The missing f-pawn means Black’s king is perpetually weak, and they’re going to have a hell of a time trying to castle kingside. There’s also a direct threat of Ng5 that’s not easy to deal with. Meanwhile, our missing d-pawn accelerates our development by opening lines for the bishop and queen. Weak king for opponent + accelerated development for us = massive danger for them. While Black looked like an attacking genius in the game, in this position he’d have to show some impressive defensive skills just to survive.

The completed file is small enough to easily fit on a postcard, but nonetheless represents a clear vision for how we’re going to defeat Black’s strategy.

Of course, our task was simplified by the crappitude of Black’s opening. There’s a reason people don’t usually sacrifice a pawn like this. It was easy for us to spacebar our way to a great position (follow the top engine line on every move). What makes a good opening good is precisely that you can’t do this – you have to be much more cunning and creative to pose your opponent practical problems.

Nonetheless, this preparation shows some key elements that I look for in all of my opening files. First, we have a clear idea of how we want to approach the position. In this case, it’s prioritizing development over material and keeping our opponent on the back foot. It’s much easier to decide on individual moves when you have a principle guiding your decisions. This also makes it easier to remember the lines, because everything is connected by a logical throughline.

Second, the file is heavily annotated. This forces you to make sure you understand what’s going on when you create the file, and makes the lines easier to remember when you review it. I also like to use arrows to demonstrate threats, maneuvers, and so on.

Finally, the file is not too long. In this case, it would make no sense to have an extensive file, since the variation is (deservedly) rare and easy to defeat. But even in the case of main lines, I prefer to start with minimal files and build them up gradually. What I’ve found is that when you start with a file that’s too long, it’s impossible to understand and remember everything, and you’re just left with a jumble of random moves.

In this sense, creating an opening file is like crafting a sculpture: you remove extraneous material until you’re left with something that clearly expresses an idea.