I play the Van Geet Opening and only the Van Geet as white for a few reasons.

1. I like to be unique.

2. For some reason I actually survive way more moves with the Van Geet against the 2000+ player who lives next door than with any other opening. (I survive 40+ with the Van Geet, but with other openings, only 20 to 30 moves.)

3. People don't usually expect the Van Geet.

4. I've read that it's better to play what you're comfortable with than what is theoretically better. I have fun with the Van Geet.

So far, I've already decided on the first few moves with the Van Geet Opening for my play. All of the first few moves for everything except for 1...d5. And I really hate 1...d5.

I've tried just about everything against it. 1. e4/Nf3/d4/and even e3. In e4, as long as the opponent recaptures the pawn, I can draw, which I've done most of the time. (Against my friends, of course, not the +2000 player who lives next door. I haven't entered any tourneys yet, but I will soon.)

When 1... d5 happens, I should pretty much lay down the King. What soon follows is 2. Ne2 c5 and then I'm pretty much cramped. Then I do Ng3.

As black against my friends, I play 1... d5 against everything except for 1. e4, which I haven't decided on yet, but I'm leaning towards the Caro-Kann or the Scandinavian (then it wouldn't be too hard to memorize my first move as black. )

Does anyone have any hints/tips for me for playing the Van Geet? Also any book/website recommendations? It would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

The issue with 1.Nc3 is that you're really playing a transpositional game, and a savvy black player will transpose you into a position where you really wish you could move your c-pawn.

The most obvious was to do that is 1.Nc3 d5 (which is probably why you don't like that so much). Now d4 in the next few moves is likely to transpose to an opening where you have trouble putting pressure on your opponent's center, and/or can't support your own center, as the moves c3 and c4 are not at your disposal.

It seems like the only reasonable try for an advantage, then, is to go for a rapid opening of the position, eg 1.Nc3 d5 2.e4 but ...ed looks equal (ed 3.Nxe4 Nf6 going for rapid development or simply e5) and 2. ... d4 looks like an ambitious plan to seize a lot of central space and kick white around.

You mentioned in another thread that you're a beginner who has only been playing for a month and a half, so I'm going to give you a few pieces of advice based on that. I'm only an intermediate player (1400ish USCF), but this advice is based on what most masters/coaches recommend for beginning players, as well as my own experience of spending way too long at the same rating when I felt I should have been improving.

1. Give up the Van Geet and stick to "normal" classical openings instead, starting with 1. e4. At your level, you don't know basic opening principles well enough to make exceptions to them. Learn the basics before you get into the tricky stuff.

And I'm not saying this because I don't like 1. Nc3. I've tried it a couple of times, and I'm considering switching to it as my main weapon after my next tournament, just as a way to get open games while avoiding the Sicilian (1. e4 c5). But for now, I'm still playing 1. e4, at least through my next tournament (Sept 1-3), because I don't want to take the time to learn new openings before then.

2. Stop studying openings and focus on tactics, tactics, tactics!!! This isn't just me speaking, but many, MANY people giving advice all over the internet, including almost every professional chess coach. Start with a book of easy puzzles and go through them over and over until you can spot the solutions instantly. Then move on to harder puzzles. In my attempt to get back into "fighting form" after a few years away from the game, I've done over 3000 chess puzzles in the last 3 months. I've slowed down on the quantity in the last week or two because I'm doing much harder puzzles where I spend 5-10 minutes each, but I'm still working on tactics at least half an hour every day.

The point is that it won't matter if you have a great position coming out of the opening if you mess up the middle game and end game. Study tactics to make sure you don't get clobbered quickly in the middle game, then end games so you know how to play if you survive that long.

Now that I've given you some advice that you didn't really want to hear (but needed to anyway), let me point out a flaw in your reasoning for why you like the Van Geet. Your reasons 1, 3, and 4 are fine. Being unique and catching your opponents unprepared are good reasons for picking a particular opening, once you've played enough to understand normal opening principles. And it's always good to stick to the openings you're most comfortable with in tournaments, and save the experiments for when it doesn't matter. But your reason #2 is flawed.

You say that you like it because you survive longer in that opening than in any other opening against that strong player. But you still lose.

The most important thing that any player can do to improve is to study their games afterwards, especially the losses, and figure out what they did wrong. If you lose quickly, it's probably going to be pretty obvious why you lost, so you can spot your mistakes and learn from them.

If you lose slowly, it's probably because of minor, subtle mistakes that take a while for your opponent to exploit. When reviewing the game afterwards, unless you've got a stronger player pointing out the mistakes and telling you what they are, you're not likely to even realize that they're all mistakes. And even if they are pointed out to you, they're less likely to stick in your head.

Let me give you an example. When I first started playing, I found an internet site to play on to practice against serious competition. (I recommend freechess.org, by the way). In one of my first games, I lost to the Scholar's Mate. It's a checkmate that can happen on the 4th move of the game if one player just doesn't spot it. If you've never seen it, look it up on Wikipedia or something. To this day, that's still one of the most memorable games of chess I've ever played, and I've never fallen for the Scholar's Mate since.

Nobody ever falls for it twice, and that's my point. Fast losses are memorable and educational. For a while, I switched from playing 1. e4 to 1. d4 because I wanted to avoid tactics and play closed games where I thought I'd last longer. I did last longer, but I still lost, but I didn't learn as much. Now that I'm returning to the game, I switched back to 1. e4, because I realize I'll learn more from it. I even play some gambits where I give up a pawn in the opening just to guarantee that it'll be a wild, wide open game with lots of tactical shots. I risk losing faster and uglier games this way, but even when I lose, it's always educational, so I end up being a better player in the long run because of it.

Sorry for the long post, but hopefully it'll help.

--Fromper

The Van Geet Opening is the Dutch name for The Queen's Knight Opening.
There are other names: Dunst Opening.
Some very strong correspondence players use it regularly, if not
invariably. The Danish CC-grandmaster Ove Ekebjaerg has just
completed all his games with White in the 14th CC World
Championship reaching a score of 6/7 with 1 Nc3, and he is now certain
of at least runner-up spot in the tournament. A strike rate of 85.71%,
largely against other grandmasters, is not bad with any opening! Some
of Ekebjaerg's games with 1 Nc3 transpose to other openings but many
follow original paths and his wins tend to be long and strategically-
based.

In America, following Modern Chess Openings, 1 Nc3 is known as the
Dunst Opening after a player called Ted Dunst who employed it a lot.
Here is one of the miniatures he won with it.
Above from Chess Cafe.

For Black the proper answer (Fine) is 1-; d5 and not e5. As e5 allows an early transposition to a Center Counter Gambit with colors reversed.

If White plays 2. d4, the game transposes to a poor variation of the QP Opening.

From a book Soviet School of Chess (Kotov), Kotov relates that Openings should be played because you know the Opening, and not to be different.
Knowing an opening means exactly that, knowing the opening, the variations, and transpositions which can lead Black to to an inferior position.

One idea of the Opening is to gain an extra tempo as White by leading Black to a reversed opening.
I once wrote an article in the CCLA Chess publication on a reversed Opening,
King's Indian Attack where I indicated that Black falls behind by playing a reversed opening.
The problem with playing 1. Nc3 (only) is that eventually your opponent(s) will catch on, and do their homework when they face you.
Reinfeld once wrote a book on Keres and Smyslov and how they did their homework on openings they played. (We call it going back to the drawing board). Until they got it right.

This opening definitely has some of its own unique lines, though it can also be used as a transpositional system. For instance, I originally looked at it because I wanted a way to try and get to the Vienna (1. e4 e5 2. Nc3) without having to face the Sicilian (1. e4 c5).

As Malbase said, there are correspondence grandmasters who play this regularly, as well as a few OTB grandmasters. I checked chesslabs.com and found a few games where top players have used it. Apparently, Aronian beat Svidler with it last year, and Morozevich has used it a few times, even against Kasparov, though he lost that one. So even at the top level, it's a respectable opening.

The common move after 1. Nc3 d5 is 2. e4. If black pushes to d4, then 3. Ne2 gets the knight out of the way and attacks the pawn. The knight generally ends up on g3, so it's kind of like a reversed Tango that way (another reason I like this line, since I've played around with the Tango as black, so I'm already somewhat comfortable with these types of positions).

Like I said, though, I think the original poster will learn more from classical open games than from this. Personally, I'm also sticking with 1. e4 for now also, though I would consider trying 1. Nc3 against certain known Sicilian players at my local club, just to see what happens.

--Fromper

"You mentioned in another thread that you're a beginner who has only been playing for a month and a half, so I'm going to give you a few pieces of advice based on that."

I missed that.

If that's the case, then drop this crap, play 1.e4, and gambit away.

Heh. Given all the good advice you've given me on these forums, it's good to see that you agree with the advice I'm giving to other people.

--Fromper

Wow, that was more information than I was expecting to get, and that's not a bad thing.

I thanked all three of you for your replies.

I guess I will stick to your advice Fromper. I already know about the 'work on tactics before openings' thing, and that's exactly what I've been doing. I finished reading all of the Predator at the Chess Board website a week ago, and since then, I've been doing 10 tactics puzzles a day from various websites. (Is that enough?)

That's why I finally decided I should start working on openings and strategy. But, since it's been suggested, I'm definitely going to be playing 1. e4 from now on, since I only want the best for my game as quickly as possible.

But I have another question. When do you think it is okay from me to go back to the Van Geet Opening? What signal would suggest that I'm good enough to do so?

By the way, I already know the names of most openings, I have a good memory.

Thanks.

I don't know about doing puzzles from "various web sites". I prefer having more control over the types of puzzles I'm doing, instead of being completely random like that. As a beginner, you should probably get a book of really easy tactical puzzles, or find a web site with hundreds of those to go through. Go through them over and over until you can spot the solutions easily. Then do the same with a set of several hundred medium difficulty puzzles, then eventually hard ones. I've just reached the point of doing hard puzzles, and I'm mixing in some random stuff, including easier sets that I've already been through and random puzzles on various web sites. But starting out, you should be spending most of your time on the easy stuff, to get used to spotting really basic tactics quickly.

As for when to go back to the Van Geet, I have no idea. As I said, I'm an intermediate player, and I'm not sure if I should be playing it yet. I'm sticking to open positions in general, because I'm still focused on improving at tactics and attacking. I've just been considering 1. Nc3 as a way to avoid the Sicilian while still sometimes transposing to the Vienna. But then sometimes I think I should dive head first into the Sicilian and learn the main lines instead of avoiding it. For now, I'm not modifying my opening repertoire until after my next big tournament Sept 1-3, so I'll probably wait until then to decide if I want to study the Sicilian or the Van Geet.

--Fromper

Oh ok. Well I'll see if I can get any books on tactic puzzles when I get back to the U.S. (I'm in France right now.)

Well, thanks for all your help anyhoo.