Winning Chess Games in the Opening by Rafael Leitao

The opening is the most critical phase in chess. If you are an extremely aggressive player, from the very first moves striving to place pressure on your opponent – you will thrive in the opening and achieve great positions early in your games. However if you are a passive player and prefer to build a solid position before creating threats against your opponent’s position, you will never achieve good positions in the opening because your opponent will have a free reign to seize the initiative and start attacking you. If you want to be a strong chess player, it is absolutely essential to deeply understand basic opening rules (control the center, develop your pieces, create threats). It’s not just about memorizing openings! Many chess players prefer to memorize certain opening schemes and move orders, believing that if they can just make it out of the first 10 moves with an equal position in a middlegame set-up they feel comfortable with – then they have played a successful chess opening! This couldn’t be farther from the truth! Playing the opening well means that you are constantly striving to develop your pieces and create threats, that you are dedicating much of your energy to your opponent’s plans so that you can figure out how to best take advantage of the defects in their moves. Think about the games of some of the best opening players in the history of chess – Garry Kasparov would always aim to create huge amounts of tension as early as possible in the game, applying maximum pressure on any unwary opponent. Bobby Fischer is another great example, as not only was his opening preparation very deep – he was also flexible and willing to shift his strategy if an opponent played inaccurately. In this 3.5 hour chess DVD, you will vastly increase your understanding of the opening phase in chess as Brazilian Champion Grandmaster Rafael Leitão explains various instructive examples to illustrate how exceptionally important an aggressive and attentive attitude is in the beginning phase of the game.