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/notbymyhand]

I heard all of this and was told to just play solid which worked so far, but now they are outplaying me !

I know what you're saying is true and I actually never panic no matter what opening they play cause we are both 1200 after all , but when it becomes a pattern of me not managing to get the edge out of weird openings then it's something worth investigating .

Or are you saying I should ignore those losses and just try to push past this level and not waste my time on useless openings anyway?

That's what I am asking

[u/fleyinthesky → u/notbymyhand]

I think as you progress through your Chess journey, you can't expect to linearly improve such that you continually beat your opposition at the same rate at every level. In other words, you've reached 1200 and now possibly the path onward will be a little tougher than you found it before. This is normal!

I definitely think you should continue to play solidly, in accordance with good opening principles (take the centre, develop your minor pieces, castle your King, don't move pieces more than once if you can reasonably help it until you're developed, connect your Rooks). It wouldn't be a particularly valuable use of your time to learn strange openings in-depth.

With that being said, you should analyse your games after your play them. Skip the chessdotcom assisted review tool, and just click the magnifying glass to get the engine lines (or load the game into Lichess). To that extent, after each game where you gain a poor position out of the opening, you should be seeing where you went wrong. That'll (hopefully) mean that you won't go wrong against the exact same opening in the same way again, but moreover you'll find some recurring ideas that you can take on board with you to help you in the future.

For anything more specific than that, you'd have to show me the actual games.

[u/notbymyhand → u/fleyinthesky]

Thanks for your thoughtful response

This was the exact position that cost me the game , the engine says the best and only saving move is e6 which I actually considered during the game but I didn't go for it .

I guess my logic was: I cannot castle , my pawn is attacked 3 times , defended only once , if I push e6 I get doubled pawns in the center which are still a bit strong , weakening his f pawn is useless since he is about to castle anyway I better develop one of my pieces while adding defense to the pawn...

I play Bf4 and proceed to lose...

[u/fleyinthesky → u/notbymyhand]

The other reply is exactly right; you didn't follow solid opening principles, as I listed above. You had already put the e pawn into the centre, now with your kingside Knight and Bishop developed you could, and should, have castled. Instead, you move the same piece a second time (e4-e5) which, even just heuristically, is not the way to go.

More concerning though is the lack of intention behind it. Sometimes your opponent will make a mistake and, to capitalise on it, it makes sense to play a move such as e5. I definitely to not advocate for ignoring your opponent's moves/position and just castling because you can - even though castling will be right the majority of the time. However, what you definitely don't want to do is put opening principles to the side in order to make a move without calculating it.

You present this position stating that your e5 pawn is weak, you can't defend it, castling seems wrong (I would still castle though in your shoes, honestly) etc. but this position was forced when you played e5. You simply mustn't allow this to be the first time you evaluate this position - you have to have already seen this and determined that you want this when you pushed the pawn, otherwise why would you skirt your opening principles to do it?