Chess Openings for Beginners: Five Principles and Four Openings

You do not need to memorise openings

Chess opening books run to thousands of pages, and it is easy to assume you need to learn some of that before you can play properly. You do not. At beginner and club level, games are decided far more often by a piece left unprotected than by a missed line of theory.

What helps is a handful of principles that tell you what to do in the first ten or so moves in almost any position. Learn those, add one or two openings you enjoy, and you will reach the middle of the game with a sound position far more often. Everything here can be tried straight away against the computer in our Chess game.

The five opening principles

Nearly every good opening, however complicated, follows these ideas. When you are unsure what to play, check your move against them.

• Fight for the centre. The four central squares (e4, d4, e5, d5) are where pieces have the most reach. Put a pawn or two there, or aim pieces at them.
• Develop your pieces. Bring out knights and bishops early, ideally one new piece per move. A piece still on its starting square is not playing.
• Castle early. Castling tucks your king behind pawns and brings a rook towards the centre in one move. Most beginners castle too late.
• Do not bring the queen out too soon. An early queen gets chased around by smaller pieces, and each chase gains your opponent a free developing move.
• Do not move the same piece twice without a reason. Every extra move with one piece is a move not spent developing another.

Four openings worth learning first

These are popular at every level because they follow the principles naturally. Move notation is shown in brackets for anyone who wants it.

• The Italian Game (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4). White takes the centre, develops a knight to attack the e5 pawn, and points a bishop at f7, the weakest square near Black's king. Simple, classical and full of attacking chances.
• The Queen's Gambit (1.d4 d5 2.c4). White offers a side pawn to pull Black's central pawn away. It is not a real sacrifice, as the pawn can usually be won back, and it leads to solid positions.
• The London System (1.d4, then Bf4, e3, Nf3). A set-up White can play against almost anything. It is popular with beginners precisely because it needs little memorisation.
• The Sicilian Defence (1.e4 c5), for Black. Instead of mirroring White, Black contests the centre from the side. It leads to sharp, unbalanced games, and it is the most popular reply to 1.e4 among strong players.

Two quick checkmates to know how to stop

The Scholar's Mate is the trap every beginner meets sooner or later. White plays e4, then brings the queen to h5 or f3 and the bishop to c4, both aimed at f7. If Black does not notice, the queen captures on f7 with checkmate on move four. The defence is simple once you know it: a move such as Qe7 or g6 (when the queen is on h5) blocks the attack, and the early queen then becomes a target for your developing pieces.

The Fool's Mate is the fastest checkmate possible, in two moves. It only happens when a player opens up their own king with f3 or f4 followed by g4, letting the enemy queen land on h4 or h5. The lesson is broader than the trap itself: moving the pawns in front of your king early is almost always a mistake.

Spotting these patterns is part of a wider skill, seeing a finishing move before it happens, which is covered in how to see checkmate before it happens.

Common beginner mistakes in the opening

Most opening disasters come from a short list of habits. Grabbing pawns with the queen while the rest of the army sleeps. Launching an attack with one or two pieces before the others are out. Leaving the king in the centre after the central pawns have been traded, so that a rook or queen can check it along an open file.

A useful habit is a quick safety check before every move: what did my opponent's last move threaten, and is every one of my pieces protected? Most games under about 1200 rating are lost to a hanging piece rather than to a deep plan, and asking those two questions removes a large share of them.

How to practise openings

Pick one opening for White and one reply as Black, and play them repeatedly. After each game, look at the first ten moves and check them against the five principles rather than against a book. You will learn more from understanding why a move was weak than from memorising the right one.

The full game in our Chess page plays by all the real rules, including castling, en passant and promotion, and shows the legal squares when you pick up a piece, so it is a relaxed place to try a new opening. When you want a shorter session, its finishing puzzles train the pattern spotting that turns a good opening into a win.