Chess Openings to Avoid for Practical and Common Success

Avoid Ruy Lopez, English, Sicilian, and Queen's Gambit Accepted due to complexity, limited options, and practicality. Grunfeld Defense needs thorough understanding.

### 4 Chess Openings to Avoid According to Levy Rozman
* Levy Rozman shares the "**4 Chess Openings to Avoid**" based on three criteria: **ease of understanding, practicality, and commonality**.
* 🏰 The Ruy Lopez with the white pieces is complex, with many variations and counters, making it **impractical and challenging to master**.
* 🏴 The English Opening is best countered by starting with **Nf3** to maintain flexibility and avoid the strong **e5 response**.
* 🐉 The Sicilian Defense, especially the Najdorf, is extremely complex due to **numerous variations and sidelines**, making it **impractical for most players**.
* 👑 The Queen's Gambit Accepted is risky as it **surrenders the center pawn for little compensation**, often leading to a **lost position**.
* 🎁 As a bonus, the Grunfeld Defense by black, while requiring knowledge of white's various lines, offers **good practicality, common positions, and relatively easy-to-understand plans**.

ladies and gentlemen, in all of your time-consuming chess content here on YouTube, have you ever sat there and wondered, what are the easiest openings to learn? Why are there so many openings? Which opening should I avoid? We'll be glad that you clicked on this video because today I am going to give you, based on my many years of experience teaching chess, the openings that you should absolutely avoid adding into your repertoire. I am judging openings based on three criteria. Number one, how easy are they to understand? And what I mean by that is if you had to explain the opening to a beginner, Uh, yeah, can you explain all the plans? Or are there like 20 of them depending on how your opponent responds? Right, there is a difference. Number two, practicality. How easy is it to learn this opening? Are there 30 different variations? Are there sidelines by the opponent that are also pretty decent, right? How much time do you have to study openings during the day? That all determines whether an opening is practical or not. And the last one, how

common is it let's say you fulfill the first step, which is learning all of the variations. Are you actually going to get this opening? Do people at your level even know how to play these openings? So, based on those three criteria, let's jump into today's video. We are going to start with two openings with white, and then we are going to start with two openings with black. I mean, we're gonna end with two openings with black, uh, and then I'm gonna give you a bonus. It's the best kind of clickbait. I click-baited you. I'm actually gonna give you five openings instead of four. First one is the Ruy Lopez with the white pieces. E4 on its own is a great move. E5 is a great response. But if you get to this position, and by the way, you don't even have to get to this position, you can play a different second move. Why on earth would you play the Ruy Lopez? Who do you think you are? You think you're some 2700

grand do you even know what the rule lopez is? It is one of the most complex, positional, well-explored openings by some of the. It's like climbing mount everest. You can't even take a hike in your local forest without getting tired. Why are you trying to climb mount everest? So the rue lopez main line is the whole idea is to apply pressure to this and this, and the best part is you can't even take that because in this position there is queen d4 forking you. So after bishop back to a4, there is a variation which is taking the knight, but I digress. The main line of this position, all right, according to the chess player database, is something like c3, all right, and even if you get to this position, which is the main line, black has about five options here. Now let's say we go a couple of moves back and black plays the marshall because this is a very aggressive pawn sacrifice line. Well, after white grabs this pawn, according to the leeches.

database white loses 70% of the time, so congratulations. Now you need to avoid what is known as the Marshall, right? So now that you're done learning something against the Marshall, you might play an anti-Marshall. You might play the move h3 here, or something like that. Now we need to go all the way back. Okay, the chances of you even getting here after a6 are not high because black might play the Berlin. Now you need a weapon against the Berlin Defense. You need to learn castles. What are you going to learn? You're going to learn the Berlin endgame. After d4, knight d6, bishop c6, dc, de, knight f5, queen d8, king d8, you're gonna learn how to play the Berlin endgame. Or you're gonna play an anti-Berlin. Now learn all of black's other variations. By the way, what if black doesn't know any openings and plays queen f6? Do you even have a weapon against queen f6? You can't just continue in the same style because this

is not a great move, but it has to be punished appropriately. Like you know, here, you know, if you're gonna play c3 d4, that might be okay, but you have to play this now because there's a queen here. If you play the move c3 here, it's not gonna pack the same punch because the whole point of this. What if black plays g5 g4, you know, I mean now all of your study is completely out the window. A lot of people here play the move bishop c5, for example, which is not a good move either, right? Some people play the Bird's Defense. Do you know how to beat the Bird's Defense, right? And like let's say a person with black is preparing against the Ruy Lopez. They might play some sideline. Let's say after a6, bishop a4, black plays any of the other major defenses, the deferred Schliemann, the deferred Kieseritzky, all right? There's a bunch. There's some sideline like this with knight a5. This is some variation too. It's called like Norwegian Variation.

where you can just grab this bishop at some sort of pawn sacrifice by black. I mean there are so many problems with learning the Ruy Lopez for white. And remember my scale. Is it a practical opening to learn? No, absolutely not. No, no, no. It is not practical. Is it common? Well, sure, I guess, because this position is common. But are black's responses common? Good luck, good luck, building any consistency in the repertoire that you're going to practice, right? Is it common? Okay, maybe. Is it practical? Absolutely not. Is it easy to understand? Is it easy to understand? Don't lie to yourself. And what I mean by this is, let's go back to this position. There are two options here that are so much easier to understand. The Scotch is so easy to understand. The Ponziani might be even easier to understand. The whole point of the Ponziani is to go here and here. You don't need to learn 20 different setups. You need to learn d5 and knight f6. Everything else is bad against d5. You can learn a very tricky

line queen a4 against knight f6 you can learn the gambit with d4 giving up this pawn and that's just one of the options you can play the italian the plans here are much simpler your bishop doesn't have to dance around the board all right you can go for a fried liver with knight f7 i mean of course then you have to learn the main line of the fried liver sure it's very forcing but you don't even have to do that you can just play d3 all right like this is even much easier to understand because at least the game plan is hitting the f7 pawn although italian and spanish positions can be very closed but in general if you play more forcing like the scotch you have to learn like two lines here at most three okay i mean the scotch is much more forcing it's much more practical the chances that you get to build consistency as you play your openings is so much higher with the scotch and folks let's not even forget you

don't even have to play knight f3. You can play the Vienna. This is my favorite opening with e4 a5. It wins about 60% of the time in my students' games. Right, people who play the Vienna, you can play a King's Gambit or a Danish Gambit. You can force the game to a position that you will get 80 to 90 percent of the time in the first five moves. When you play the Ruy Lopez, you have absolutely no control over how Black is going to play here. None. Again, stop thinking that you're some 2700 rated player. Again, you might disagree with me. I said that in the introduction. You might like this opening, but there are better options out there that will give you greater success, an easier understanding of your opening, and it will be far easier to learn. But some of you are up for the challenge, so I cannot stop you. The next opening I have for White, I did not have an easy time choosing openings for White, but the next opening I have

for weight is a little bit more brief, and my explanation is going to be a little bit less thorough, a little bit less intense. Stop playing the English. Let me tell you why the best move against the English. The English is not a bad opening, but the best move against the English for black is e5, and I suggest that you begin with knight f3. If you want to play the English, play the move knight f3. The difference between starting with knight f3 and c4 is the fact that committing a pawn is less flexible than committing the knight. The knight is going to go here. Knight f3 is the best, according to the meta, first move for white because you do not commit any pawns, and the knight will go to f3 in like 99% of openings. You can now play the move c4 depending on what black plays. If black plays knight f6, well, now you have an English, and then you can just go back to playing knight c3, right? The thing about playing c4 is that e5 is

very good. It's a very good move by Black. And according to the Leeches database, a lot of people here after knight c3 knight f6 play the move g3. And the best move for Black after g3 systems is to attack the center with c6 d5. I have struggled with this with White. This is the most common position after five moves by White in the English. In Leeches database, White is worse here. This position is minus point seven for Black. And it's actually like even worse if d4 is on the board. Like if Black finds all the best moves, it's like minus one. This is the most common position. People have no clue what they're doing when they play the English. If Black puts two pawns in the center, White is going to get a terrible position after knight c3 d4. But that doesn't even happen, right? So people who play the English think that they can just put the bishop here and then put the knight. No, if you want to play the

English. I recommend starting with knight f3. Because after d5, you can still play the English. Now here, you may need to learn the captures variation and the d4 variation. Here, you can play for e3. But if you don't want to allow that, just go here first, then play for c4. So you get an advantageous move order against the position that is considered the best for the opponent. When you play knight f3, you prevent the move e5, the most popular position here for black. The most common move here for black is the move knight c6. It's already plus one for white after d4 c4. It's now a Chigorin defense, but nobody with black actually knows that. They just accidentally set up in a bad way. So starting with knight f3 and then playing the English might be the better way to go. The drawback is that the knight goes to f3 first. And this is very advanced. Now, but let's say you play the English. And against this, you play, you play the four pawns attack against.

the king's Indian defense excuse me defense or you play something without knight f3 then knight f3 you set you've sacrificed that option that's extremely advanced and that's something that you have to deal with also if you're not if you have some weapon against king's Indian defense you might as well play d4 but c4 allows e5 and the my problem with this is that nobody knows what they're doing here with when they play with white they just play like this and the database shows that black has this opening to play c6 d5 black doesn't do it but you watching this video right now will know that and you will start playing this against the english c65 is the best way to play you just have to build your repertoire behind it um right now people are still playing all sorts of you know garbage they're playing i mean d5 is not garbage but people just sort of develop and then just get a very bad position because they have no clue how to play against

the english. if you want to play against the english, add the ready move order to your toolbox. otherwise, you're really leaving the door open for people to uh take the center with e5 and then further take the center with d5. that's just all i'm saying. all right, the english is good. the ready is good. i prefer the ready move order over the english one because i think it cuts back a lot of options uh that uh that black has. now we will look at two weapons uh two things with the black pieces. okay folks stop. for the love of god playing the night or sicilian. i know what you're gonna say levy there's a lot of good courses out there by 2700s. yeah those courses are unbelievably impractical for like 99 of the chess audience. okay if you're like 2000 over the board. yeah of course at that level everybody's studying opening theory. the sicilian is fine and i will give you some things that i think score well in.

the Sicilian but guys you are not playing in the can. Oops sorry, that was one of them. I just spoiled it. Don't play the night off. You have so many better options. The night or of course is after d6 d4 opens Sicilian by white takes takes and now we have this. Okay, why is the night or complicated? Because in this position white has 15 options. Did you know that? Did you know that in this position white can play uh bishop e3, bishop d2, bishop g5, bishop e2, bishop d3, bishop c4, knight b3, knight e2, f3, h3, h4, rook g1, g3, a3. Yeah, all of these things are moves. All of these moves have been played before and you have to know how to play against all of them. And there is no clear-cut plan like yes, okay, it's to play b5 and maybe e5 and then put your bishops out, but there are so many better options. There are so many better options. By the time you learn five lines, now your opponents

aren't even playing the open Sicilian. Here's another problem with playing the Sicilian Defense, the Alapin Sicilian. To play d4 like in the Ponziani. Do you know what the three most popular moves here in the chess database are for black? Knight c6, which is plus one for white after d4. D6, which is plus one for white after d4. And e6. Nobody even knows what to do after the second move of the Sicilian Defense. Why are you adding one of the most complex, layered, intricate openings to your toolbox, and you don't even know how to play it past the second move? Stop lying to yourself. If you want to take the responsibility of learning d5 or knight f6, which are the only two possible lines after c3. And then what if I play b3? What if I play a3? What if I play g3 or f4, right? There's so many options. What if I play the close Sicilian? What if I play the Grand Prix Attack? What if I play some idiot

Sicilian, which people are doing nowadays by like taking and then moving the queen to e3. A lot of top GMs are playing like this now. All right, just to get people out of theory. There are so many better ways of learning the Sicilian Defense wing gambits. I haven't even added wing and it's just unbelievable. It's like the Ruy Lopez, right? You don't even know how to make toast. You want to make some sort of, uh, you know, specialized truffle dish with a little caramelization. Shut up, you're gonna blow the kitchen up. Okay, so in my opinion, the easiest Sicilian to learn with black is um, is the Dragon Sicilian or the Khan Sicilian. So if you want to stick to d6, uh, in my opinion, the best Sicilian to learn in this position is not to play a6 but to play g6. You can at least kind of have no idea what you're doing, play bishop g7 and castles. But according to the statistics, the best Sicilian Defense for black is

the paulsen khan sicilian. It is e6 followed by d4, and then a6. This Sicilian score is like 55 percent according to Legion's database, which is very impressive. And the point is that you stop the knights from jumping into your position, and then you can do something like this. You can play bishop b4, and this scores really well. You should investigate the Khan Sicilian a little bit more. It's very easy to play. It seems like black gets a lot of success because you sort of prevent white from making natural moves. So if you want to add a Sicilian, I recommend this one. But again, you need to learn how to deal with c3, and you need to learn how to deal with all the sidelines. If you can get past that responsibility, then you are eligible to play the Sicilian, and you have my blessing. But again, the Sicilian is incredibly difficult. So difficult, folks. I mean, my god, it's like there are so many sidelines. And again, it turns out that people are

already losing on the second move by playing like this. This is just not good. It's plus 1.6 in this position. You cannot be plus 1.6 after four moves. You can't stop doing that so you can learn the Sicilian, but you need to know what you're doing. Don't play the knight or if nobody even knows what's even the best players in the world don't know what's going on in the knight or and they play it all the time since they're five years old. So that is my those are my thoughts on the Sicilian defense, and the last one I have for you is um, yeah. So stop playing the Queen's Gambit accepted. First of all, I would recommend against d4. You learn either a system opening like the modern defense, but then of course you have to learn how to get back into e4 positions. Play the Indian defenses, put the knight on f6, and then play either like this and try to play the Nimzo or the Queen's Indian or try to play the king's.

indian or the grunfeld, which is actually going to be my bonus opening spoiler alert. The reason is nobody has any idea how to handle the queen's gambit. Your options after the queen's gambit are severely limited. There to play the queen's gambit declined, which is just incredibly boring, and you need a weapon against the catalan, which is one of the most annoying weapons in the world. It just really is. It's so hard to play against. So I would recommend playing knight f6. Now a lot of people also play the semislav, which is just I mean it's good, but it's also incredibly difficult to understand, very restricted position that relies on getting pawn breaks later in the game. And yet don't take the gambit on the second move. I mean this is just this is the second most popular move in this position, and it's very close to being the most popular move. This is not a free pawn. Now the most common position here after eight moves according to licia's is this.

where black is just already lost like black has no idea how to fight back. Here this position is already plus 1.3. That's not good, that's just not good at all. If you are going to accept the queen's gambit, you need to know what to do after white plays e4. You need to know and the best thing to do is to strike back in the center immediately. There's various tactics here or knight f6, which attacks the pawn. Knight goes here, you create this blockade against e3. You have to know one of the lines. You cannot fall for this trap where you lose your queen after six moves, now your rook after six moves. But you'll have to block with the knight or the bishop and not lose the rook. Yeah, the queen's gambit accepted is just a disaster waiting to happen. You completely surrender control of the center of the board for basically no reason at all. You just see free pawn, so you take free pawn. And this is why beginners get absolutely melted in these

positions. If you put the pawn on d5, you need to keep it there or you need to play a sideline like the Albin Counter-Gambit, uh, the Chigorin Defense. You need to strike back in the middle and not just give it up. You can learn how to play the Queen's Gambit and accept it. It's not a bad move, but it's a horrible move for like 90 percent of the rating ladder, uh, and people just don't know how to play the positions at all. Even white, this is not the best move. It's not the best move because black should play for b5 here. Black should play a6, b5, but nobody does that because nobody knows what they're doing, uh, so don't play the Queen's Gambit, but accept it. And frankly, I would suggest not even playing d5. Now of course, many of you play the move d5 because you're 1100. Nobody knows the intricacies of the Queen's Gambit, but I would suggest as you get stronger to consider adding knight f6. Many of you

hear things i say and go oh my god. I do that. I have to change everything. Not necessarily, but if you're gonna play d5, stop accepting this gambit. Find a different option. You can decline the gambit. You can play the Slav defense. You can play a counter gambit. You can play the Baltic defense. I mean, there are many options, but stop taking the pawn on c4. Stop it. But, Levy, I wish. Stop it. It's not good. I mean, there's like, this is not some sort of savior to black's position. If you're going to put the pawn on d5, I would recommend not taking on c4. If you do take on c4, you hold the burden of proof. You need to make sure you get a good position and not plus 1.3 after eight moves, which is the most common thing that happens in that position. So, these are the four openings that I would avoid. Okay. I have tried to give you things that I would avoid.

tried to give you ways to change. I hope it's been useful. Now it's time for the bonus. Going into this video, I thought that the Grunfeld Defense by black is something beginners should avoid. And that defense is d4 for white, knight f6, c4, g6, knight c3. And now not the King's Indian, but this. The reason I've always said the Grunfeld is too complicated is because it's a weird opening. Okay, the whole point here is that black strikes back in the middle right away, then plays bishop g7 and tries to play c5. So for instance, if white just plays a bunch of normal moves and doesn't even take, then what's gonna happen is black is going to play this move c5, which just looks weird because it's a free pawn. But the whole point is that black will now play like queen a5. The queen goes out to a5 in a lot of positions, and this pawn can be won back. Like this pawn can be recaptured.

black gets a lot of activity against the white position. This move c5 is very important. It happens even in the main line of the greenfield defense. And again, one of the reasons that I suggested the Grunfeld originally in this video and then removed it is because I was like, Well, this is, you know, white gets this enormous center and black doesn't really know how to fight back against this enormous center. Oh my goodness. But I gotta tell you, black wins like 55 to 60 percent of the time in the Grunfeld. That might be a coincidence, but it actually turns out that the Grunfeld is really not that horrible. I was going to include it in this video, but I think I'm a reformed man. The game plans on the Grunfeld are still a little bit tricky, but black wants to play bishop g4 hitting the knight and removing it from the defense of the pawn. Queen to a5 is always a very useful move as well. Queen i5 after the c pawn moves hits this.

pressures. This can always slide in here and continue to bully things. Um, now if you're going to play the Grunfeld, you really need to learn your stuff because there, again, just like in the Sicilian, there is the main line that we just looked at. There is also d5, cd5, knight d5, and all the variations where white plays knight f3. Then there is the variation of e4, knight c3, bc3, bishop g7, bishop c4, c5, 92, and then there are a bunch of different lines here for white. Uh, there is the variation knight f3, c5, and white plays h3, preventing. I mean, do you get what I'm saying? There's a million lines. So the way you can seize the initiative back with black is you can play something like the Budapest Gambit. And now you have like three lines that you need to know. The problem is the Budapest Gambit, according to Stockfish, is not as good as the Grunfeld. But when you force the game with black.

you win or with white and you force opponents into positions. You hit all three points of today's video. All right, I'm gonna go back to full screen for dramatic effect. What were those three points? Practicality, meaning the opening is easy to learn and you don't need to spend hours and you don't need to be prepared for sidelines. It's very easy to learn. You learn about five to ten lines, you're good. That's number one, right? The next thing is common. You are going to get the same positions, the same types of positions in the first five to seven moves over and over again, which is going to help you build your practice and understanding of this opening and handling of the middle game plans and time management so you're not burning all your clock time learning the opening, right? And it's easy to understand. You can explain it to people and if your opponents don't know the opening, you still know the plans. You don't need your opponents to check certain boxes to get you into certain positions to remember.

what you learned from that course that you took those are the three criteria of today's video. Of course, the video is open to debate. You are more than welcome to debate with me in the comments. Actually, I really have a lot of success with that opening. I debated with myself. I was going to put the Grunfeld in this video. I actually don't think it's so hard to learn. I actually don't think that the plans are that hard to understand. The problem is that you need to learn a lot of White's different options. But compared to something like the Queen's Gambit Accepted, where according to the statistics, Black is just getting a completely lost position most of the time, that's bad. Okay, so those are the openings, folks. Let me know if you enjoyed this video. I'll make some more similar ones in the future to help you with your opening studies. I'll see you in the next video. Get out of here.

STOP PLAYING These 4 Chess Openings

GothamChess

The Ruy Lopez opening with white pieces is complex, with many variations and requires extensive study, making it impractical for most players.

The Berlin Defense as a response to the Ruy Lopez is also difficult to counter and requires a deep understanding of the endgame.

The multitude of options and variations in these openings make them challenging and less common at the non-professional level.

Simplifying the Ruy Lopez Opening for White

The Ruy Lopez opening for White is complex and difficult to control, making it impractical for building a consistent repertoire.

In contrast, the Scotch opening offers a much more forcing and practical alternative with higher chances of success.

The Vienna opening, King's Gambit, and Danish Gambit also provide easier understanding and greater control over the game's direction compared to the Ruy Lopez.

The best move for black against the English opening is e5, while for white, starting with knight f3 is recommended.

This move allows for flexibility and prevents the strong e5 move by black, leading to a favorable position.

Playing c4 in the English opening can be countered by black with the c6 d5 move, which has been shown to give black an advantage in the game.

The Debate on Chess Openings: English vs.

The Ready move order is favored over the English opening for its restriction of black's options.

The Sicilian Defense is criticized for its complexity and the multitude of possible white moves, making it impractical for most players.

The Alapin Sicilian is also questioned for its popularity despite the uncertainty of black's best moves.

Top GMs are now favoring moving the queen to e3 in the Sicilian Defense, aiming to disrupt traditional opening theory.

The most successful Sicilian Defense for black is the Paulsen Khan Sicilian, with a 55 percent success rate, known for preventing white from making natural moves.

Despite its popularity, the Sicilian Defense is considered incredibly difficult and requires thorough preparation to handle its numerous sidelines and variations.

The Queen's Gambit limits options for black after the opening, leading to a challenging position.

Accepting the gambit can quickly lead to a difficult and losing position for black.

It is crucial to strike back in the center and avoid falling for traps in order to navigate the Queen's Gambit successfully.

Strategic Openings Advice for Chess Players

Avoid accepting the gambit and consider other options like the Slav defense or Baltic defense.

Taking the pawn on c4 puts a burden of proof on the player and often leads to a disadvantageous position.

The Grunfeld Defense is actually quite effective for black, with a high win rate, despite its initial complexity and was considered as a viable option in the video.

The Grunfeld opening requires in-depth knowledge due to its numerous variations and lines, similar to the Sicilian defense.

However, it offers the opportunity to seize the initiative as Black.

The opening is praised for its practicality, common positions in the early game, and easy-to-understand nature, making it a valuable choice for players looking to improve their opening strategy.