Which opening should I choose? An advice to myself 500 ELOs ago.

If I could build a time machine and talk to myself when I was a 1400-Elo player, the first thing I’d do is tell myself to completely rethink my approach to gaining Elo.

I initially managed to push my way up to around the 1400 mark purely on the strength of basic opening principles—control the center, develop your pieces, castle early—combined with decent endgame skills and a tactical vision from endless puzzle-solving. But once I got there, I hit a massive brick wall. Suddenly, I found myself consistently coming out of the opening with completely miserable positions, and it became harder and harder to creatively dig myself out of the holes I was drilling on move six.

To fix it, I just started grabbing whatever openings were easiest to find on YouTube or Lichess. I picked up the Jobava London, the Caro-Kann, and the Indian Defense. It was simple to set up, and it worked for a brief window. Eventually, I even dropped $50+ on a premium Jobava London course (thank you, Danya). It was a 600+ lines PGN files with commentary, but by drilling those specific moves relentlessly, I managed to force my rating up.

But then, the wheels completely fell off. I got stuck, and my win rate plummeted.

What I wish I had understood back then is that choosing openings just because they are popular or easy to look up has major limitations. To actually cross into the higher tiers, you need a highly structured approach to opening repertoire development. You need to know which lines can grow with you.

To figure out exactly what that structure should look like, I set up a massive data experiment. I had Stockfish play out its top moves at a human-like depth (Depth 24) against the most frequent responses from real players in the Lichess database, segmented by Intermediate (1200+), Advanced (1600+), and Master (2000-2500) Elo levels. Through this model, I explored 35+ openings (each with for and against perspectives). At the end of it, I had analyzed 127,000+ lines and little less than a million positions. This is the conclusion drawing from that data.

All the images shown in this article are from the interactive graph I built based on that simulation data, which you can play around with right here. But I suggest you go through the insights below and then explore this graph.

Openings for White

1.e4 over 1. d4

When you are an intermediate player, 1.d4 looks incredibly attractive because it feels solid and has a massive initial win rate of 79.18% in our intermediate model. But as you climb, the win rate for 1.d4 completely falls off a cliff, turning into an exhausting draw-fest at the master tier with a 99.93% draw rate. The King's Pawn opening might have a slightly lower success rate to begin with at 68.2%. However, it keeps its winning edge as you push through Advanced (up to 2000) and Master (up to 2500) levels.

Think Breadth-First, specialize later

As intermediates, we tend to go to town with a hyper-specific opening and try to drag every single game into that exact structure. It is heavily to our detriment. You need to cover the breadth of common structures first before you dive into deep specialization.

The 98 lines in King's Pawn reportire will cover a plethora of openings in just 7 moves. It is important to be prepared for a variety of black's response.

Learn to squash specific defense lines

If you come across an opponent play that is difficult to beat, study specific lines against those openings. Typically, these lines are surprisingly easier to learn, even at a higher levels. This expands your original generic repertoire. For example lines against dubious opening like Stafford Gambit are less than 10. Even those specifically against otherwise solid Petrov defense or Caro Kann are easy to pick up.

Develop specific Weapons

When opponent allows it, have some favorite weapons. Avoid dubious gambits like King's Gambit. Choose an efffective, solid weapons that are easy to learn. There are many. There is Smith Mora and Grand-Prix against c5, Vienna Game and Gambit against e5. Scotch game and even Evan's Gambit. They are going to help you through master levels

Openings for Black

Black defends. Win is an exception

Hyper-aggressive responses, like Stafford Gambits, are almost always dubious. You will notice that all high-win-rate openings for black are eventually dicey at high ELOs. All solid openings have relatively, low win rate. You play for opponent to blunder, or time-out.

Build Broad-breadth repertoire

Start with a broad breadth repertoire that prepares for most common white openings. You should know your first 7 moves to any of the white's choices. Given that white can play anything, your deeper preparations are going to be hard and probably best saved for a later date.

Sicillian and Indian defense

Sicillian against e4 and Indian defense against d4 (or the delayed d4s) are the easiest lines to learn with highest win rate. I know Levi said dont play Sicillian till you know what you are doing, and Alex makes Caro-Kann look super easy. But my simulation begs to differ.

Additional Lines

It is normally easy to learn against specific lines. Maybe a Benko gambit if opponent allows it. Caro Kann gives good results, but demands more preparations. Same with French defense. Once you have mastered the basics, you can explore these specialized defenses and refutations.

Practice Smart

What you are building is your repertoire. You make it your own by practicing. While actual game play (made easy with online plays) is a way to improve, learning through mistakes should be a complimentary method. You train on your repertoire through spaced repetitions to build a brain-muscle memory of moves to get you through your opening phase quickly and solidly. Review your games often to see where you deviated from your repertoire or your opponent made a move you had not seen before. Improve the repertoire by adding new analyzed lines and removing refuted lines. Merge training courses to build a more comprehensive repertoire.

Of course, there is an app for that. In fact there are plenty. But when I was trying to push past my plateau, I could not find a single tool that let me do everything I needed to do. So I built one myself. The app is called "PGN Trainer: Chess Openings", available on iphones, Ipads and Macs , and is free to download. Every single opening study and line generated in this experiment is available to download directly inside the app.

The entire Intermediate tier of these opening studies is 100% free to download and train, and it syncs automatically between your Mac and iPhone. The Advanced and Master-level studies do require a premium membership (which I am sincerely hoping will help pay for my kids' college tuition one day). That said, I give out plenty of free credits just for signing up, so you can unlock the deeper lines and test it out completely for free.

If you are stuck in that intermediate plateau and tired of playing dead-end opening lines, stop wasting time on traps that will not scale. Build a real repertoire, drill your weaknesses, and start climbing.

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