Andrew Martin and The Basics of Winning Chess The Opening 4. The right way to learn a new opening and a summary of opening principles

I've been watching the 4th and final chapter on the opening tips, and in this chapter International Master Andrew Martin discusses the right way to learn a new opening and makes a summary of all the previous opening principles. The first thing he advocates is experimentation. There's no harm in trying a variety of openings. Eventually you will arive at the right choices for you. The best way to prepare is to use the following method; The first stage is the familiarization phase. He recommends playing through a number of games in your favourite opening, say 20 or 30 games or so. To get the basic ideas in your head. At this stage ignore detail an play through the games at a reasonable pace but not too slow. The second stage after the familiarization phase, is to try the opening out in friendly games. Either on the Internet, at your club or against a strong playing program. Just to see how it works. The third stage is to check out your knowledge that you've learned now, against the theory in the opening books. Notice only after a playing phase and a familiarization phase are you coming to the opening books. This is the stage at which you need to study some theory. people make the mistake of studying theory far to often (in Mr. Martin's opinion), without trying out the openings themselves for quite a few times. Then repeat stages two and three for a few weeks. Keep trying the opening out in friendly games at your club, the Internet, against your program, and keep studying the theory. Finally, you then come to play your opening in competitive chess. You should have a very good knowledge of the opening at this stage. Having played it and studied it for some time. And finally, don't forget to analyze your games thereafter. This is probably the most important stage of all of the whole process. A lot of players leave out this phase cause they're simply too lazy. If you done all the study, done all the work, and you analyze your games after again using all the tools mentioned, you cant go wrong. You can continuesly update your opening knowledge this way. This is how the best players do it... This is how you should do it. Follow this advice and you won't go far wrong.

Now we come to a final summary of all the opening principles of this part of the DVD. If you stick to and master the following principles of opening play, you will not go far wrong. Point number one is a fairly simple one, bring all the pieces out into play as quickly as possible. In general the pieces should be developed in reverse order of strength, but that's not an absolute. Knights and Bishops first, Rooks, Queens. Something like that. Only make a few pawn moves in the opening. Don´t go freaking out untill you´ve mastered the basics. Only make those pawn moves that are necesarry to let the pieces out. This is very important. The third point is to castle early to get your King to safety and to bring your Rooks into the game. Think Rooks. They are very important pieces. A lot of beginning players neglect their Rooks when they´re starting out in chess. Think about your Rooks and use them. Don´t lose time by bringing your pieces out to vulnarable squares where they can get chased around. Try not to move the same piece too many times. Play to occupy or control the center. This gives you more choices of plans for the middlegame. And finally remember that the whole idea of the opening is to get a good position going into the moddlegame. No more, no less.

Note that i´ve been writing this down while watching the video itself. So it is kind of roughly summarized )or whatever you call it).

I am moving on now to another part of the DVD that handles the middlegame.