Originally Posted by RookMaster_10
so i've been playing chess for a long time, i just never really knew there were names for different openings. Well in order to set up my game i've been reading about openings, but there is one thing that confuses me. That is when i'm looking at an opening how do i know if its for black or for white? and if an opening is for white, can it be used for black? i know this question might be a beginner question, but like i said no one ever taught me openings or names, just how to play.
thanks for the replies.
James
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Oo boy. Well first let's start with the most important thing to remember about opening nomunclature:
It does
not make sense.
That said, there are generalities that help;
Classically, you could say that 'attacks','openings' and 'gambits' are initiated by white, 'counterattacks', 'defenses' and 'countergambits' by black.
For instance:
White: Austrian Attack, Ponziani Opening, King's Gambit
Black: Marshall Counterattack, Pirc Defense, Falkbeer Countergambit
That's not always the case for gambits however, there are a number of black gambits, the Budapest, the Icelandic, the Benko, the Elephant, the Blackburne Shilling, the Grünfeld (gambit) come to mind.
Annoyingly, you'll find that that most opening subtheory gets labeled 'variation' which is no help whatsoever in discovering who initiated the line. To make matters worse, transpositions can make it even foggier
There is no real help for anyone there, if you're not familiar with the opening variation at all and it's named variation or gambit you'll be clueless as to 'who started it'. The only way to find out who initiated the variation then would be to look it up; wikipedia is an excellent source for looking up casual information on opening theory. Or you could always ask us.