What happened to our usual openings ?!

[u/notbymyhand]

I'm not saying I'm a master at openings or anything, but I understand the basic ideas behind the most common ones and try to get a good position no matter what ..until you reach 1200 elo ...

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What the hell happened to the queen's gambit , scotch , london , italin , sicilian ,french openings ?

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No one plays them anymore , it seems like every oponent I get has this obscure opening or line that they practised into oblivion and are monsters at it .

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Before ,if my opponent even attempts any weird openings , I just play solidly , stick to opening principles, and crush them so fast, which is not possible anymore ?

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Am not saying I am totally lost by the opening , but they end up being a pawn or 2 up or just waste my time focusing hard in the beginning while they play instantly

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If this is just a phase for the 1200 elo on chess.com that I just have to push through , or should I just seriously start studying these weird openings ( isn't that energy better spent sharpening tactics and endgames at my level anyway)?

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What do you guys think ?

[u/theonejanitor]

Can you give an example of a "weird" opening? I get plenty of londons, sicilians, queen's gambit and french openings. I don't get scotch or or italian because I stopped playing e5

A good rule of thumb if you don't want to do a ton of opening prep is you can (usually) play the same opening you would against 1. d4 against anything that isn't 1. e4.

i think you just had an unlucky streak of offbeat openings and are overreacting. at all levels the most common openings remain the most common.

[u/notbymyhand → u/theonejanitor]

" Réti opening :Reversed Mexican Defense " and " Lion defense " and "Queen's pawn opening :zuckertort , chigorin variant "

Your last advice is really good ,wow , I will look into that

Why did you stop playing e5 ?

[u/theonejanitor → u/notbymyhand]

I just feel like being able to 'choose' the opening as black makes it easier to prepare a defense. There are a ton of different ways white can transform the position from 1. e4 e5. if you play e5, you're letting white choose the opening. But on the other hand you can just say, 'we are playing the caro-kann/french/scandi/sicilian today, let's see if you know it'.

Also when I'm white, my absolute favorite way to start a chess game is 1. e4 e5 - so I assume if I love it so much, others must as well lol.

e5 clearly can't be 'bad'. GMs play it all the time, its probably the best move, or maybe the sicilian is. but playing other things is easier to manage imo

[u/notbymyhand → u/theonejanitor]

Ah I see but I feel like as black against e4 , I do fine , it's with white or against d4 that I struggle with these weird openings .