How to learn chess openings without memorising a book

Why memorising lines does not work

A beginner who memorises fifteen moves of the Ruy Lopez will find that opponents leave the line on move four. The memorised moves are then useless, and worse, the player does not know why they were good moves in the first place.

Club games leave theory early. What decides them is whether you know what to do in the first eight to ten moves of the positions you really get. That is a much smaller job than learning an opening book, and it can be done one game at a time.

Step 1: learn the principles first

Every sound opening follows the same few rules. If you are ever out of book, these are your book.

• Put a pawn in the centre, and fight for the squares e4, d4, e5 and d5.
• Develop knights and bishops before you move any piece twice.
• Castle early, usually within the first ten moves.
• Do not bring the queen out early, where it can be chased.
• Before every move, ask what your opponent's last move threatens.

Step 2: pick a small repertoire

You need three things: one opening as White, one reply to 1.e4 and one reply to 1.d4. Choose openings where the moves follow the principles above, so that they are easy to remember.

Stay with these for at least fifty games. Changing opening every week is the most common reason that players never learn one.

Step 3: learn ideas, with a few exact moves

For each opening, learn the first five or six moves exactly, and for each move learn one sentence about what it is for. In the Italian, 3.Bc4 points the bishop at f7, the weakest square in Black's position. If you know that, you will find good moves when your opponent plays something unexpected.

Also learn the two or three traps that club players fall into in your opening. In the Italian and the Two Knights, that means the Fried Liver Attack and the Legal trap. Traps are the one place where exact memory pays off at once.

Step 4: fix one thing after every game

This is the step that most players skip, and it is the one that matters most. After each game, win or lose, find the first move where you or your opponent left the book. Then ask two questions.

1. If it was you, what was the book move, and why is it better?
2. If it was your opponent, was their move a mistake, and how should you punish it?

Then play the correct line through once on a board. It takes two minutes, and the lesson stays with you because you have just felt what happens without it.

You can do this by hand with the free Lichess opening explorer. ChessDummy does it for you: it marks the move that left the book during the game on chess.com or lichess, and offers to practice the line the moment the game ends.

Step 5: review the positions you keep getting wrong

After twenty or thirty games you will see that the same few positions cause most of the damage. These are your real opening problems. Keep a short list and replay those lines once a week. A list of five positions that you truly know is worth more than a course of five hundred that you half remember.

Common mistakes

• Studying openings you never get. If nobody at your level plays the Najdorf against you, do not study the Najdorf.
• Going too deep too soon. Up to about 1400, knowing six to eight moves with understanding is enough.
• Copying moves without the reason. A move you do not understand is the first one you will forget.
• Blaming the opening for a loss. Most club games are decided by tactics later on. Spend more time on puzzles than on openings.

How much time to spend

For players under 1800, a sensible split is about one fifth of your chess time on openings and the rest on tactics, endgames and playing. The two-minute review after each game covers most of that fifth without feeling like study.

If you want tactics practice in short sessions, our sister project Halfchess has daily mate-in-one, two and three puzzles on a smaller board.

Frequently asked questions