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Exeter Chess Club’s 10 Rules for the Opening

  1. Get your pieces out into the centre quickly. The opening  is a race to see who can get their pieces out first while keeping at least a share of control of the centre.
    • This is the main point to remember; all the other rules are just footnotes to this one.  Sortez les pieces!
  2. Get a firm foothold in the centre - a pawn on one of the ‘little centre’ squares e4/e5/d5/d4 - and don’t give it up without good reason
  3. Move your king to safety at the side by castling
  4. Complete your development before moving a piece twice or starting an attack.  By move 12, you should have connected your Rooks, or be about to do so.
  5. More detail on winning the race:
    • move pieces not pawns, and
    • move them to their best squares in one move if you can, and also
    • try to gain time if you can by aggressive moves.
  6. Move your minor pieces out early on generally move Knights before Bishops, and generally straightaway to f3/c3 or f6/c6 (but probably not both, as White)
  7. Don’t move out your major pieces (Q+RR) where they will get chased around by the little guys and possibly trapped.
  8. Don’t grab pawns or attack if you haven’t completed developmen; especially, don’t charge around with your Queen trying to hoover up pawns.
  9. If one side gets ahead in development:
    • If you are ahead in development, start something going and open up lines for your better pieces
    • If you are behind in development, don’t start anything and keep things closed until you have caught up. This is especially true if you have not castled!
  10. Rooks are the hardest piece to develop: “openings should be judged on the prospects they offer to ambitious young Rooks” - PURDY.  To develop your Rooks, open a file; to open a file, bring pawns into a position to swap them off; so after 1.e4, plan to play d2-d4 or f2-f4 soon. 
    • In fact, you have to attack the opponent’s centre with pawns to get much chance of an advantage as White (The Four Knights’ Game is next to Old Stodge in drawishness), so d2-d4 makes sense for more than one reason.

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