For the sake of keeping this book short, I will not be trying to teach all details about chess notation. Part of this is because I don’t want to explain it wrong. However, all the major chess sites including lichess do keep track of the moves you play in every game and will show you the chess notation. It’s actually very easy to pick up just by looking at examples from your own games. I will be calling moves by their chess notation name but almost every move will also have a picture with it so that there will be no confusion as to what it means.

White takes their turn first in the game of chess. This means that if you are playing as white, you have the unique opportunity to pick the first move that will set the course for the rest of the game! However, there are only a few moves that are considered to be very good. I will show you the two most popular choices that white players use to start the game.

But first, I have an example image that shows the names of all the squares in chess notation.

That image has all the letters and numbers of each square from the white player’s perspective. Look back at this picture because it will help explain a lot of what I mean in the pages after it. The image has the letters in capitals because it looks cool, but when Chess notation is written, capital letters usually refer to which piece is moving while lowercase letters refer to the file (which vertical column a square is on). The numbers are which rank (horizontal row) the square is on. See more on the topic of chess notation in Chapter 7.

Square e1 is where the white king starts the game and e8 is where the black king starts the game. Also look at squares f2 and f7 because those are the squares most vulnerable to attacks that put the king in check. Moving those pawns at the beginning of the game is asking for trouble! The most popular first move for white is e4 (white’s king pawn two squares forward).

The main reason e4 is a popular move is because it allows white’s queen or bishop to get out on the next turn white plays. Most chess masters consider it to be the best move and it is also commonly played by chess engines. But it’s not the only popular move. The second is d4 (white’s queen pawn two squares forward)

Moving this pawn to d4 is popular because it is the start of many different openings that involve getting the dark squared bishop out early in the game. This could be the start of the Queen’s Gambit, Trompowsky Attack, or the London System.

But that isn’t to say there aren’t countless openings that begin with the first and most popular choice I mentioned earlier. If you are playing white, you should decide which of these moves to start with and then you should start with it every time until you get used to seeing how your opponent moves and how they respond to each of your moves. That’s not just my advice but is the advice of chess coach Levy Rozman (GothamChess) who I learned a lot from!

Although studying openings is fun, don’t rely on them so much that you find yourself lost as soon as your opponent does something unexpected. That being said, you should probably have a plan for the first 4 moves at least. Planning ahead requires some experience of playing, winning, and losing games to see what worked and what didn’t.

I find that I win my games more often when I start with e4, but I find myself having more fun when I play d4 as my first move and then try for the Queen’s Gambit, which is my favorite. I will be explaining the Queen’s Gambit opening later on but first I am going to show you the most generic ways to start the game. This will mostly be from white’s perspective but you will find that this method is flexible enough to be mirrored for both players.

The Bishop’s Opening

First, both white and black move their e file pawns two squares for their first move.

This is equally good for both of them because that allows both of them to get their bishops or queens moved out diagonally. Keep in mind that at the beginning of the game, diagonal moves are faster than orthogonal moves. The rooks can’t get out because the pawns in front of them are blocking their movement. For this reason, your early attacks will depend on bishops.

Next, the bishops come out. This means they are both attacking the weak f2 and f7 squares I mentioned earlier. This position is called the bishop’s opening for obvious reasons. If you find yourself in the bishop’s opening position, you have some serious options to consider. If you are playing white, you already have an advantage in this position because it is your turn. You could move the knight to f3 and attack the e5 pawn or you might want to move the queen to h5 and try a scholar’s mate. Keep in mind that the possible moves your opponent can do are endless and that to a certain extent, to show an example, I have to make up possible moves of only one of them just to prove the point I am showing. There is no way of knowing if you will end up in the mirrored bishop setup as shown in the previous image. With that being said, if you EVER DO find yourself in this exact position, I will show you some great possibilities that can come from it. I recommend knight to f3.

Why is this position good for white, you may ask. That’s because this knight move accomplishes several things at once.

1. It attacks the e5 pawn
2. It gets the knight out of the way so the king can castle
3. It prevents the black queen from going to h4 and trying to scholar’s mate white king on f2. Based on my experience, what usually happens after this is that black will move their queen’s pawn to d6 and defend the e4 pawn. Then white will do the reverse and move their queen pawn to d3.

This also allows the bishops to move out that were previously blocked by those pawns. Black will most likely move the bishop to G4 and attack the knight.

This creates a problem for white because if they move the knight, the queen behind it will be captured. Because I value knights more than bishops, I recommend the following. After the bishop attacks the knight, sacrifice your bishop on f7 and put the king in check.

You may wonder why we would sacrifice a bishop. The idea behind this is for the king to capture it so that we lure the king to where the knight can put it in check!

At this point, the king is forced to move again. No matter where the king moves to, it will be white’s turn again and the white queen can capture the black bishop!

At this point, white has lost a bishop but they have also taken a bishop and a pawn. This strategy of sacrificing pieces to gain an advantage is one of my favorite things to do. It highlights the importance of being able to plan ahead in chess. With that being said, I will next teach you my favorite opening for white, the Queen’s Gambit!

The Queen’s Gambit

The Queen’s Gambit sounds like a fancy name, and this name was used for a Netflix show as well. However, this opening was well known before people had televisions, computers, or the internet. The word “gambit” means sacrifice. In this opening white sacrifices a pawn with the hope of getting an advantage later. To some people, it also means a gamble because there is no way of knowing if it will work out the way you want depending on what your opponent does.

The opening starts with each side moving the pawn in front of their queen. Then white moves the pawn on c2 to c4.

In this position, black’s pawn can capture the white pawn and yet it doesn’t appear that white can capture it back, at least not yet. If it does take the pawn, this is known as accepting the gambit. New players will more likely than not take this pawn if they don’t see the trap.

You see, the idea was to distract the pawn and move it away from the center so that white’s king pawn could move two squares forward. Also notice that the white bishop on f1 could also capture the black pawn on c4 next turn, but not so fast, first, black has to choose their next move. The only problem is that there really is no good way for black to stop white from taking their pawn with the bishop. If they try to protect it with another pawn, things can turn out badly. Sooner or later white will capture back the c4 pawn with the bishop and if black tries to stop it, they will only lose more pieces.

My best advice is that if you accept the Queen’s Gambit, also accept that you will lose this pawn and don’t try to defend it by moving the b7 pawn to b5. This has never worked out well for my opponents. Do not let the sequence of the following images happen to you!

I also want you to notice that the previous sequence of moves would still be just as bad if white had decided to move their king’s pawn only one space to e3. There are valid reasons they might do so to add extra protection to the d4 pawn. The d4 pawn is only protected by the queen right now so beware of this in all your games.

If you are the black player, I would recommend against accepting the Queen’s Gambit entirely. It leads to many traps by white. If you do accept it, you will lose your pawn anyway. Don’t waste time with that and instead move out other pawns depending on what pieces you plan to move. Below are the two most common responses to the Queen’s Gambit.

Queen’s Gambit Declined

Slav Defense

Both of these responses allow you to capture the white pawn back if it captures your d5 pawn. More importantly, you are getting pawns out of the way of your other pieces so that they can start attacking white. The Queen’s Gambit Declined is probably slightly better than the Slav Defense because moving the king’s pawn is just generally a great move because then black’s queen and dark squared bishop can move out diagonally and try to attack white.

But a final note is that accepting or declining the Queen’s Gambit does not lose for black by any means, but accepting it allows white to get both of their center pawns and allows them to start moving both bishops out very quickly. White already has the advantage, don’t give them more help if you are the black player. But if you are the white player, I have plenty of advice on what to do. However I may have to add more to this book later.

Now one thing you may have noticed is that the Queen’s Gambit started with moving the Queen’s Pawn (d4) instead of the King’s Pawn (e4) like in the previous example with the elaborate bishop sacrifice. Queen pawn openings are just far more fun to play because the game takes longer and my opponents get frustrated. e4 is better for quicker wins but is so cliché that I got tired of playing it and became a d4 player for my first move.

The London System

I am not the first person to say that the London System is a solid opening. In fact, it’s probably the best opening to teach a beginner for playing the white pieces. The first move will always be d4. The London System is actually quite different than the Queen’s Gambit because your goal is not an early attack nor sacrificing pieces. The goal is to build a defensive structure. Look at the following picture.

It takes a total of 7 moves to achieve this setup but it can usually be done quite easily no matter what black does. If your opponent makes bad moves and you can capture their pieces then that should take priority over arranging the pieces like this picture. For example, if your opponent moves their king’s pawn two squares forward to e5, then just take it with your d4 pawn!

It’s totally easy to see how a player might be used to moving their king’s pawn two squares and might mistakenly let white’s d4 pawn take it. This completely disables black’s development besides costing them a pawn. They can’t move their knight to f6, nor can they move the pawn in front of their queen either one or two spaces (because of en passant rule). If black makes this mistake, then they already have a huge disadvantage. This is not like the Queen’s Gambit because there is no advantage to offering white a free pawn. If black does this, then take that pawn and then build the rest of the London Fortress even though there will be a missing pawn at the head of the pyramid of pawns. But most of the time, your opponent will not make a mistake as bad as the previous example. They will most likely do something smarter such as knight to f6.

In this position, we see that the black knight is trying to prevent our king’s pawn from going to e4. That’s totally fine because that is not what we will do in the London system. We will continue to build our setup. In this position we should next move the bishop to f4.

It’s worth mentioning that bishop to f5 would also be a good move, and would be called the Trompowsky attack. However, since I am teaching the London System, we will stick with bishop to f4 for now.

Because of the fact that we have disabled the enemy king’s pawn from moving two squares, most players will instead move their queen’s pawn two squares instead. Remember, moving the pawns in front of the king or queen is almost always a good idea. With that in mind, our next move should be pawn to e3 because this is the next step in building the pawn pyramid, and it also adds an extra defender to the e4 pawn and Bishop.

Keep in mind that this is still early in the game and that chess openings only take you so far. However, white has a really good winning chance in this setup. For example, black may try to offer the black version of the Queen’s Gambit by pawn to c5. However, doing so allows us to take their knight on b8!

The rook can take our bishop but we have eliminated one of the enemy knights. You may be wondering, why sacrifice the bishop to take down a knight? The reason I do this is because in my experience, knights are better than bishops. Each chess player has different opinions on this, but here is my own reasoning on why knights are more powerful than bishops.

1. Two knights can defend each other, unlike bishops which are always on different colored squares.
2. Knight attacks cannot be blocked, they are therefore better for checkmating in many cases I have seen.
3. Knights look like horses, which are my favorite animal. I prefer to protect my horses.

Maybe you disagree with my advice. However, the main point is that to play the London System, you should get your pieces out similar to the picture of the 7 moves.

All of what I have talked about so far is openings that white chooses to play. If you are the black player, what should you do? For one thing, you can expect that white will most likely play e4 for their first move, so I will next cover the French Defense.

The French Defense

The French Defense is my main opening when playing as the black player. I will make the case for why it deserves more credit as an opening even though it is less popular than the Caro Kann (which may be covered later)

This is the start of the French Defense. White has moved king’s pawn to e4 and we are moving our king’s pawn only one square instead of the usual two.

I know it looks weird and uncomfortable to move a pawn only one square when it could have moved two, but the reason for this will become clear very soon.

Almost all the time, white will move their queen’s pawn two squares and in this case you will copy them.

In this position, white has the option of capturing the d5 black pawn. If they take it, it is called the exchange variation of the French Defense. White will capture the pawn but then we capture it right back. Then the board will look like this.

As the black player, this is precisely what you wanted to happen because now the path is open for you to move either of your bishops or your queen out if you need to.

The other alternative is when white does not take the pawn and instead advances it to e5.

This is called the advanced variation of the French Defense, not because it is advanced in the sense of complicated but because the white pawn has advanced instead of capturing. When this happens, the best thing to do is to move a pawn to c5 and offer the “black queen’s gambit” and hope that white takes it so you can capture back with the bishop. From that point the game continues like normal and it follows much of the same logic as I use when I play the Queen’s Gambit.

For example, the following sequence of images shows exactly how a checkmate can happen quickly if white does not defend the weak f2 square next to their king.

Obviously, the game doesn’t always end this quickly but as you see the French Defense is based on the same logic as the Queen’s Gambit by offering a pawn with the hope of lining the bishop and the queen up to attack the weak square. At the least, this will put the king on the run, and sometimes even a checkmate if your opponent doesn’t defend correctly.

In this chapter, I have shown my favorite openings to play. Don’t think that you know everything about how these will turn out for you in your games because the possibilities are infinite. You may find your own style and even invent a new opening no one has seen before!

But the openings I have recommended are those that I have had the most success with and I have an advantage with them from practice. That’s why I am qualified to teach them. I also have videos on my YouTube channel where I have gone more in depth with them.

Chapter 3: Chess variants