Awesome Chess Openings to Surprise Your Opponent

Learn how to play the Queen's Gambit and gain a superior position to your opponent. In addition, you will a particularly dangerous trap as white that can lead to a quick material advantage and also help you to avoid danger when playing as black.

Learn how to play the Queen's Gambit Declined and achieve a solid opening as both white and black. As one of the most common openings for players that prefer to play 1.d4, this position will arise in your games often, so it is imperative to understand how to play the first several moves.

The Nimzowitsch Defense is a favorite among strong Grandmasters for it's simplicity and powerful effectiveness. Understanding how to play this opening as black can give you a big advantage against the less well prepared chess player.

The Slav and Semi-Slav Defenses are two ultra solid openings to play against white's choice of 1.d4. Learning how to play both openings is a must for the chess player that aspires to graduate to an advanced level. In this lesson, you will learn the critical moves and positions that lead to success in the Slav and Semi-Slav Openings.

The King's Indian Defense is another popular 1.d4 opening that will arise in a large number of games. Understanding how to play these positions is critical to the aspiring chess player and also leads to many of the most exciting games that you will play in your chess career.

The King's Gambit is perhaps the most famous of the so-called "romantic" chess openings, which have been dubbed thus due to their popularity during the 19th century when aggressive attacking chess was the favored style of play. No longer used much at the highest levels of chess by super grandmasters, the King's gambit is still relatively popular at the amateur level and remains one of the most exciting openings to play for both sides. In this lesson you will learn how to attack aggressively with the sacrifice of a pawn in the King's Gambit.

The Schliemann Gambit is an old opening that has recently gained attention due to its use in high level competition by former world champion Vishy Anand. It can be used as a surprise weapon against 1.e4 as very few players know how to properly respond to this choice by black in the seemingly innocuous positions that the Spanish game often lead to. In this lesson, you will learn how to use the Schliemann Gambit effectively to get a crushing attack on the white king in one of the most popular opening positions in chess.

The Evans Gambit is another popular romantic opening like the King's Gambit. However, this opening remains popular and is still used from time to time by the best chess players in the world as it has been found to be more solid than the once more popular King's Gambit. Another exciting and fun opening to play, you will win many games out of the opening by using the moves that you will learn in this lesson.

The Sicilian Defense while always popular has if anything grown in popularity over the last few years and is now the most widely used opening in chess at the amateur and professional levels. This popularity makes it a critical opening to know how to play for both the white and black pieces. This is especially true due to the large number of variations that arise out of this opening depending on the move choices of your opponent. In this lesson you will learn some different variations of the Sicilian Defense for white, especially how to successfully attack black's castled king.

The Ponziani is one of the most effective surprise weapons against the Ruy Lopez and Italian setups for white. Varying from the main lines on the third move will catch your opponent off guard and lead to a very nice initiative in most games. It's also really fun to play!

In this lecture we expand upon the information that was shared in the previous openings course of this chess series and look more deeply at the ever popular Ruy Lopez opening. A critical opening to know, with many variations, in this lesson you will learn various ways to setup your pieces as white, depending on black's move choices.

The Ruy Lopez may be the most common opening for white at the amateur level, so knowing how to respond to it as black is critical if one aspires to become a strong chess player. In this course you will learn the best ways to react to white's choice of 1.e4, and setup your position for a long strategic game that will lead favorable results.

Another old and still popular opening is the French Defense. This is one black's favorite ways to combat 1.e4, which makes knowing how to play against it as white extremely important. In this lesson you will learn the ins and outs of the opening, including a dangerous trap to set for your less experienced opponent.

The French Defense continues to be one of the most successful openings to play as black against 1.e4. As such, we should become well versed in this opening, which can often lead to quick advantage for black if white makes even the slightest error in move order during the first several moves of the game. In this lesson, you will learn how to get an excellent position against 1.e4 no matter what your opponent throws at you.

In this course conclusion we will re-examine on final time the critical elements of the opening that must be mastered if one seeks to become a strong chess player. You will learn some general rules of thumb for the opening that if followed, will immediately increase your ELO rating strength by at least 100 points.