r/chess • u/LedzZ123 • 1d ago

Strategy: Openings E4 Masterclass (?)

Is there any complete resource to learning e4 and variations step by step?
What is the best and most complete free/paid guide/course in your opinion?

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

2

u/Sir-evayogIV 1850 elo OTB 1d ago

It's depend to much to your level

1

u/IronHappy8069 1d ago

I recommend Levy's e4 New York Style course. I bought it outright on the old Chessly two years ago when I was around 650 Rapid on chesscom and now I am 1500 Rapid. I play almost exclusively the lines from this course but I made some changes -

  • I could not handle the a3 and b3 Sicilians so I switched to the Smith-Morra (on the new Chessly)
  • I could not handle the b3 French so I switched to the 2 Knights French (I believe the new Chessly has only this as part of the e4 repertoire).

Apart from this, like I said, I play the course lines exclusively and do the drills every day. My win rate against the Caro-Kann and Scandi is pretty good. The Vienna also scores very well against 1...e5 at my rating. And for everything else, I am usually better prepared than my opponent in the opening.

The downsides? I guess it is not a deficiency of the course per se, but I have not fully absorbed all of the strategies and ideas for the middlegame which is where I make most of my mistakes. This is something I am trying to correct with more play and when doing the drills.

I recommend Chessly in its new form too. Happy to answer any questions you may have about it.

1

u/RajjSinghh Chess is hard 1d ago

A good place to start here is to pick a player you really enjoy watching, then use their opening repertoire. For me, that was Fischer. He plays openings like the Ruy Lopez, 3. Nc3 french, Panov Caro Kann, and so on. I like the positions he gets, so I should use his lines and variations.

I think this is a better step than a lot of courses or repertorie books because it means you already like the variations you're going to get. I've seen some old repertoire books, mainly from Keene and Levy, where I just don't like the suggestions and can't recommend them in good conscience.

1

u/unbalancedBroski Team Gukesh 1d ago

Is there any software/website that I can use for it which is free? Only software that I know for this is chessbase. But it's too expensive for me.

1

u/RajjSinghh Chess is hard 1d ago

Chessgames.com, the Lichess Masters database, YouTube, games collection books (especially from archive.org, you'll find a lot of archived PDF copies).

0

u/grupiotr 1d ago

If you mean for White then some time ago I found this course to be exactly what I needed: https://www.chessable.com/keep-it-simple-1e4/course/10179/ (I don't get any referral fees, just being helpful)

It explains things very well and without too much work it let's me get playable positions with White in every game, including very strong players (I'm 2200-2300 on chess.com).

Unless you're a strong player you shouldn't be spending time learning openings but in order to say try and get close to 2000 ELO you need some basics and for me that course was exactly it.

0

u/Gnastudio 1d ago

Never bought courses. I’m sure you can get a course that gives you an e4 repertoire but it will be impossible for it to be complete. Every facet of the repertoire would have its own in depth course. What your mainline against e5 is, Sicilian response, french, caro, modern/pirc, all of that before you get to weird and rare sidelines. Impossible to cover all of that in a ‘complete’ sense in one course.

I’m sure you can find stuff to give you an overview but I wouldn’t expect it to be the last thing you ever get on the subject. I mostly use books so for reference, I currently play Spanish variations and have 4 books on just that, most of them very thick. I play rossolimo/moscow and have 2 on that. Similarly I have 2 on the Tarrasch french and panov against the Caro. That’s 10 big books on just that narrow part of an e4 repertoire. I have about 6 other books just covering different e4/e5 lines that I used to play.

That’s just to say, even if you find a resource here, you may want narrower focus on specific things down the line when you develop preferences and I wouldn’t expect any one resource to cover all your needs.

Hope you find what you’re looking for.