The Top 10 Most Popular Chess Openings for Beginners

A chess Game is a war-based board game that can be divided into three battles, Opening, Middlegame, and Endgame. Here we are discussing The Top 10 Most Popular Chess Openings for Beginners. But before we start with our list of top openings, we must have a sound understanding of These three battles and the goal of these battles.

What is Opening In Chess?

The opening is the first battle is chess where both players try to complete the below objectives

• Obtain control on central squares e4,e5,d4,d5
• Place major and minor pieces into an active square
• Castle the king to safety
• White player try to maintain the starting advantage
• Black player try to equalize

The last two objectives are not very important at the beginning stage of any chess player, but if you consider this then you are special.

What is the middlegame in Chess?

After Opening, the middle game starts and it is here where most of the tactics take place. In the opening, players try to put their pieces on active squares so that they cover a maximum number of squares, in the Middle game players devise a plan using those pieces to attack the enemy's army and eventually get to the opponent's king to checkmate.

What is Endgame in Chess?

When only a few pieces (less than 13 points of material), the end game starts. In this phase of the game, players either try to checkmate the king or create a passed pawn to promote to any of the major or minor pieces, depending on the situation to checkmate the opponent.

Ok, Now that we have a basic understanding of the phases of a chess game let's learn The Top 10 Most Popular Chess Openings for Beginners.

The ideal opening for a beginner player would be one which has a minimum number of variations and should work against any setup of the opponent. Keeping this in mind. I am recommending the below openings.

Best Chess Opening With white for beginners

1. London System
2. Italian Game
3. Spanish Game
4. Vienna Gambit
5. Scotch Opening

Let's take a look at these openings one by one and understand why these are good for beginners

London System Opening:

London system is the best opening for beginners in my opinion for the very simple reason that it works against all kinds of black's setups and also allows rapid development for white.

London System begins with 1.d4 d5 2. Bf4 or 1.d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3.Bf4. 

Bf4 announces the arrival of the London system on the board. Checkout the move sequence below

The move order for white is more or less fixed, 1.d4 2.Nf3 3.Bf4(retreat to g3 if black offers exchange)  4.Nbd2 5.Bd3

Pros: Easy development and works against all black's setup

Cons: Black usually achieve equality out of the opening

Italian Opening:

This is the opening that most players play, whether they are beginners or masters. The Italian opening opens up the game to multiple variations and possibilities. If you want to be a tactical player, this opening will be the best for you.

From this position black has multiple options,  like castle or d6 opening up light square bishop. This position is full of possibilities and it is good for both black and white 

Spanish Game or Ruy Lopez

Spanish opening is a classical opening and has been studied for centuries. Every e4 player must learn this by heart. It begins in a similar fashion to Italian just instead of Bce we play Bb5. This opening is also known as The Ruy Lopez

Vienna Gambit

Vienna gambit also has almost fixed move order and is one the  most off beat opening. You can easily find your opponent off guarded. If not played well, you can easily get winning position in a few move

Scotch Opening

Scothc opening is again a rare opening, where white tries to open up position quickly to start developing fast and put pressure on white's king side

So above 5 opening completes our list of Opening with white and now let's dive into openings for black

Best Chess Opening With Black for beginners

1. Caro-Kann
2. Slav Defense
3. French Defense
4. Queen's Gambit Decline
5. Nimzo Indian Defense

Opening for black is more of a response than a choice. As black has to respond to white's quenstion, Black can' start with any opening against any opening. Here I have listed openings that works with both 1. e4 and 1. d4. Most of the time you are going to face 1.e4 or 1.d4, hence this set of opening is good enough at begienning level.

Caro-Kann

Caro-kann also has first few moves fixed. It is played in response of white's 1.e4. Caro-kann is very solid opening, that delays control over center. Caro-kann allows slow but solid development. In this setup usually it's very tough for white to sucessfully create an attack towards black.

Caro-kann has few variations after 2.. d5, some of the most popular variations are mentioned below

• Caro-kann Exchange variation : white exchanges the d5 pawn with its e pawn by playing exd5
• Caro-kann advance variation: white forwards the e4 pawn to e5 taking more space.
• Caro-kann Classical variation: Classical variation is shown above.

We have described the full caro-kann opening in our opening section. Take a look if you are looking to play calm and positional chess. 

Slav Defense

Slav defense is played as a response of 1.d4. It is very similar to  caro-kann. You can consider as if you are playing caro-kann itself when white has played 1.d4 instead of 1.e4

Slav is also similar in nature to caro-kann but usually it results into very sharp positions.

French defense

French defense is another favorite choice of positional players. It is a reponse to white's 1. e4. Black plays calm looking move e6 followed by d5 striking into the center

Queens Gambit declined

Queens gambit decline is very well studied opening for black. It begins with White's 1. d4 d5 2.c4 e6. White tries to gambit c4 pawn in order to gain lead in development, but black denies this gambit with e6

Nimzo Indian Defense

Nimzo Indian defense is one of the variation of Queen's gambit decline. In QGD shown above in response to Nc3 blakc plays Nf6, in Nimzo Indian Black pins that knight to the king with Bb4

So this concludes our list of The Top 10 Most Popular Chess Openings for Beginners. Although this is my list but I strongly believe that openings are very opiniated thing and depends on the style of the player.