Opening with 1.Nf3 and Wojo's Weapons

Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions regarding opening with 1.Nf3 as opposed to 1.d4 or 1.e4, as well as books such as the following (directed to opening with 1.Nf3)?

Wojo’s Weapons: Winning with White (3 or 4 volumes)

i open with 1.Nf3 exclusively, and as Gatorpawn007 said, many GM's use it.  WC Carlson used it a couple of times against Anand in their first WC match and gained good positions with it, though he misplayed later and had to settle with draws.

depending on level of play; i think "Chess Opening Essentials 4" is an excellent 4 part series, with the 4th volume concentrating on 1.Nf3 and 1.c4, which i particulary liked, because often 1.Nf3 transposes to English variations.  this book is an easy read and provides many example games, though none are annotated.

just to let you know:  volume one is on 1.e4, volume two is about 1.d4, and the third is about Indian openings......all are easy reads and a very fluid read.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/reti-1-nf3-in-general-help

Cuts down on a ton of opening theory (in a sense) and allows you to pick and choose what openings to avoid.  Agree with pfren that a knowledge of other openings can be useful so you know what you want to and don't want to transpose to (which is why it doesn't necessarily cut down opening theory).

Nf3/c4 systems have seen a huge increase in popularity at the GM level over the last decade or so.

I used to play 1.d4 exclusively, and now I'm playing 1.Nf3 and I like it better because of the transpositional ideas.  It gives me much more control over where the game goes.  The majority of the time I'm doing 1. Nf3 d5, 2. d4 (to blockade the d5 pawn) and following it up with g3 and Bg2.  But I have also used 1. Nf3 to transpose into the Queen's Gambit, the London System and the English.  Plus the Fianchetto line with g3 Bg2 really helps take a lot of bite out of the King's Indian.

As far as book, Wojo's Weapons and Hypermodern Opening Repertoire for White by Eric Schiller are the only books on 1.Nf3 I know about.

Thanks for the input, all. I'll hold off til I'm more experienced, but might experiment. Which book(s), if any, do you use Senchean.

For right now, I've honestly gone by experience, strategy, and principles as far as 1. Nf3 is concened.  The only book I am "using" for the opening is Mastering Opening Strategy by Johan Hellsten.  That book really does help you play any opening just based on strategy.  Plus it gives you a great foundation for when you start learning specific openings. 

As far as books specifically on 1. Nf3, I really only know of the two I mentioned above.  Wojo's Weapons and a Hypermodern Opening Repertoire for White.  Also if you can find anything on the Reti specifically (1. Nf3 2. C4).

@Senchean: You have mentioned that Hellsten opening book three times to me now, I believe. It is really that good and appropriate for my level (mid-1300s turn-based)? I think I am going to order it then.

How are his other books?

I like Wojo's book, and often open with 1.Nf3.  But let's be honest and admit that the Wojo's Weapon books are for very advanced players.  These are not your typical "opening system" books.  Wojo had such a profound understanding of the Open/Closed Catalan, Queen's Gambit, Semi-slav, Grunfeld, King's Indian Defence, etc, that he knew exactly when to transpose between them.  Wojo's lines are too complex and chaotic to simply memorize.  Subtle positional understanding is a pre-requisite here.  Most of us, including me, are over our heads in Wojo's world.

That being said, 1.Nf3 is still a very good opening move.  Especially on this site where most players (mainly king-pawn openers) seem unprepared for 1.Nf3. Apparantly this move is so shocking that about 25% of live players abort when they see me bang out this awesome move.

If you want suggestions on how to follow up your 1.Nf3 opening, first consider studying the Catalan and Queen's Gambit.  If that sounds like too much, maybe start with the King's Indian Attack instead.

I believe the opening book is that good.  And it is something that should be read several times.  Even though masters and above constantly state that one base there moves upon the concreteness of the position and not basic principles, they are still obeying principles.  Principles and Calculation.  How else are they evaluating a position unless they are using principles to figure out the usefulness of their pieces and pawns?  The only times you don't use principles is when you are avoiding specific tactical moves.  So yes, I think the book is very good.

As far as the two other books in the series, Mastering Chess Strategy, and Mastering Endgame Strategy, I own them.  I'm not that worried about Mastering Chess Strategy because I have already read so many books on positional play that it would be redundant at this point.  But I have skimmed through it and it does go over a lot of what you need to know.

Mastering Endgame Strategy, I will be reading intensely.  I know somethings about the endgame, but I need a strategic understanding of the endgame which Mastering Endgame Strategy goes over.

If you read these three books, plus Simple Chess by Michael Stean, Secrets of Chess: Giants of Strategy by Neil Mcdonald, and My System by Aron Nimzowitsch, you will have half of what you need to know about positional play.  The other half is pawn structures.  So yes I do recommend the books.

Bobby Fischer said that chess is based on ideas.  You must have an idea of what you are doing from the very first move.  The ideas you have are the goals you want to achieve and the methods through which you achieve them.  I really do agree with this.  Mastering Opening Strategy is all about how to develop your pieces in order to control or challenge the center.  And it is essential to understand if you want ANY sort of advantage in the opening or you want to know what to do when someone plays a strange move that pulls you out of theory, which at 1300, will happen all the time.

Let's say you want to play the Najdorf Sicilian.  The problem with it for anyone under, I don't know, 1800, is the Najdorf doesn't start until move five or six.  The chances of theory being followed for five or six moves at levels under 17-1800 are very very low.  This is why you need to understand the opening strategy as a whole.

As far as your level.  I think its appropriate.  But I have a more natural ability to understand complex ideas than most people.  So if you have trouble with that then read, take what you can from it.  Incorporate it into your games, and when you get a little stronger, read it again.  Take a little more from it and incorporate that into your play.  Read it as many times as it takes for you to fully understand and use the ideas in your games.

All I know is, I have done this with Nimzowitsch.  I have read the book twice now, and I understood more with the second reading than I did the first.

I'll end with this, as far as the value of Mastering Opening Chess Strategy.  When I decided to get serious about chess, I was around 1100.  I couldn't beat a single person in my chess club.  Now, I'm one of the top three players.  This puts me around 16-1700.  And I am on the verge of beating the top player in the club.  Everytime I have beaten the second best player in the club, he has played an opening he didn't understand.  I have beaten everytime he has done this.  And I did it based upon opening strategy.  The first time it happened he played the Dutch.  Now I know NOTHING about the dutch besides the first two or three moves.  But I won because I simply obeyed the principles of opening strategy which I learned from Hellsten's book.

P.s. Sorry for the length of post, I guess I had a lot to say. ;)

Thanks all.

@Senchean: No, don't apologize. Your posts are great. Does it matter what order in which I read the Hellston and other books you mentioned? (The Hellston strategy book came out first, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything)

What order do you recommend for me for book reading for me? Hellsten book and others (including the ones you mentioned and anything else)?

First, thank for the compliment.  I'm going to answer your question in two parts.  As far as the Helsten books, I would start with the opening book first.  The reason is, you start chess in the opening, then proceed to the middlegame, finishing in the endgame.  So honestly read them in that order.  Mastering Chess Strategy is about the Middlegame.  The Endgame book might be a little advanced so this is what I recommend if I was putting together a course.

Start with Simple Chess by Michael Stean.  It's cheap, and short.  But it has some of the best explanations on strategy I have ever seen, especially for a beginner.  It was this book that really helped me understand the concept of  weak squares and pawns, and outposts.  I still use its concepts to this very day.  It will give you a complete strategic method to use through the whole game.

Then read Simple Attacking Plans by Fred Willson.  This is also cheap and short.  But it gives you the very basics on how to attack.

I would also get Silman's Endgame Course.  It's a great introduction to the endgame, and it will get you started with the basics.  the great thing about this book is it is broken up by elo rating.  So it says, this is what you need to know if your are below 1000, this is what you need to know up to 1200 etc, going all the way to 2400.  Go through that book up to your current rating and stop.

You start out with these three because they will build you a foundation upon which everything else will be based.  From there, everything you read will expand on these three books.  A lot of what you read from now on will seem to repeat, but repetion is good.  It's how we learn.  The more you repeat it, the more you will ingrain it and use it in your games.

After those three books then you have a choice.  You can do the three Helsten Books all at once or just read the Opening Strategy one.  It will really help make some sense out of the opening.

Then what I would do is read Chess Secrets: Masters of Strategy, by Neil Mcdonald.  This is a turning point kind of a book.  It is probably the best book on strategy I have ever read.  It goes over games from Capablanca, Nimzowitsch, Petrosian, Karpov, and Kramnik all the while illustrating very important strategic points.

Then read Attacking the King by Yakov Neishtadt.  You can find it used on Amazon very cheap (like $6).  This book has one of the best descriptions of tempo and initiative I have ever read and it will go over how to attack in detail.  It will really expand on the Simple Attacking Plans book, but it isn't as complex as Art of the Attack by Vulkuvic.  It's a great intermediate book.

Now, Honestly you could read this after you do the Silman book, but it seems that beginners have a tendency to focus on attack, because it is easier than positional play, and then their positional skills suffer and it really stunts their progress.  This is why I think it is better to work on positional play first, because if your pieces aren't in the right position, your attack WILL fail anyway.

After all of this, you will be ready for My System by Aron Nimzowitsch.  And trust me, this is a complicated book.  Not necessarily because of the chess content, but because he is long winded, and his non chess examples are horrible.  But it is a MUST read for anyone who takes chess seriously.  And even though he is cited in the other books I have listed, not all books go over everything that Nimzowitsch says, and almost everything he says is must know information. 

After you read My System, reread Giants of Strategy.  They are sister books.  They go over the same material but in different ways, and they will reinforce each other.  And trust me, positional play is very complex the reinforcement is needed.

While you are doing all of this, as you feel yourself improve go over the Silman Endgame book in accordance with your Elo, use your Online Rating on Chess.com as a guide.  And go over the Mastering Endgame Strategy Book if you haven't already.

So that's:

Simple Chess, Simple Attacking Plans, Silman's Endgame Course, (The Helsten Books) Giants of Strategy, Attacking the King, and My System.

Now, I'm going to be honest.  This will take you a long time, maybe a year to a year and a half.  It is slow, but it is worth it.  It will provide you with a foundation that will serve you for the rest of your life and it will save you a lot of heartache in the future, because from here you can move on to other topics.  Honestly, I would reccomend pawn structure after this.  And while you are doing this, work on your basic tactics everyday for at least a half an hour.  You do that, and you will get a lot better, and you will be a well rounded player.  I know because its working for me.

Note how there are NO opening books in the list.  It's because at your level they are a hinderance, not a help.  Understand the other aspects of chess, THEN focus on Opening theory last.  That is my advice.  Also, take notice of Carlsen, he is World Champion in three different time controls.  He doesn't focus on the opening, (he knows them but they aren't his primary concern.)  All he wants out of the opening is a quiet, playable position.  He focusses on strategy and the endgame.  And this isn't me saying this, it's numerous commentators.  Just food for thought.

I'm glad I asked. Thanks a a lot for the detailed plan. This one is going in the save folder on my desktop.

LOL.  Glad you liked it.  That plan is the result of me stumbling through.  I really wasted the first six months of learning because chess is taught so badly overall.  So I slowly started to figure out how I would teach it.

I play both 1.Nf3 and 1.d4 (more the latter these days). Generally, the thing with 1.Nf3 is that it gives you more flexibility since you're not committing to e4 or d4 right away. On the flip side, you're leaving Black with the option of making the first move into the center, which is a different style of game than 1.e4 or 1.d4, and developing the knight seems to leave Black with a bit more in the way of options or initiative, depending how things shake out.

In general, my suggestion is to look up a few basic lines, enough to get some basic idea of what common structures might develop. Then, play some games (Live games are probably better for breaking in a new opening) to get a general feel for it. In particular, below about 1600-1800 or so most players are terrible at sticking to the book lines, so you'll get a better feel for dealing with people's actual responses instead of being confused when your opponent plays something "inferior" on the third move that you don't know how to "punish" appropriately. This is particularly true for 1.Nf3 since it's less common and players repond unpredictably to it.

Some particularly common lines:

1.Nf3 d5 can lead to the Reti proper with 2.c4, or transpose to a Queen pawn/Queen's Gambit line with 2.d4. The latter is useful for avoiding gambit players if you're not interested in dealing with such things on a given day.

The Reti proper, on the other hand, is a different animal and can get tactical in a hurry. It is a gambit of sorts, so you'll want to know how to handle 2...dxc4 - particularly if your opponent tries to keep the extra pawn, which many low-rank players do in my experience. On the other hand, 2...d4 can get cramped easily and you'll want to develop a feel for how best to counter that before playing this move in serious play.

1.Nf3 Nf6 is frankly annoying, since it doesn't give you any obvious targets. Sometimes, Black is just playing passively or is confused by your "unusual" opening choice, but not always so don't count on this. There's no single way to continue against such a response, but the key is not to develop passively - have some sort of plan or goal for your opening play. Personally, I avoid 2.c4 here because 2...c5 seems almost obligatory and I'm not a fan of symmetrical openings, but your taste may vary.

You can, of course, play a King's Indian attack with Nf3, g3, Bg2, 0-0, and so forth, which is perfectly viable and gives you a nice Bishop to work with. This can be played as a system in most cases, but do be aware of Black's plans as well and avoid playing passively after the first move. A good way to avoid passivity is to focus on preparing a major pawn break (e.g. c4 against the d5 pawn).

To conclude, I'll note as stated above that you're unlikely to find a consistent "book line" that anyone at your rating will actually stick to. The trick with 1.Nf3 seems to be more about remaining flexible and obtaining a position to your liking, at the price of some initiative in the center. Sticking to opening principles is the best general advice I can think of here, in fact, but also keep an eye toward the middlegame and the ensuing pawn structures, imbalances, etc. that you can create - you will, after a while, have an advantage over many players simply from being more familiar with typical structures than they are, which is why breaking it in through quick Live games is so useful. On the flip side, don't expect many quick knockouts (though if your opponent misplays badly enough, you *can* wipe him off the board rather efficiently, as in any opening).

@Senchean:

The only question I have about your proposed reading plan is that it doesn't seem to incorporate a lot of books study of tactical motifs. I realize you said do a lot of tactics study online, but what about books focusing on tactics? Shouldn't that be added in at an early stage, or is it in there in disguise (I realize strategy books are often tied to tactics and contain them)?

@nuclearslurpee:

Good name and even better post. Thanks. I have been cognizant for a while now of the fact that you are leaving a lot up to Black (probably part of the reason pfren said you are ready for Nf3 after the other openings are learned) and some other things you said, but a lot was new.

Your question has three parts to it.

First, besides for the tactics that are mentioned in the books through variations, no, they aren't there in disguise.  As I said in the second to last paragraph in my post you need to work on your tactics for about a half an hour every day.

Second: my thinking on tactics, based on experience and reading is this.  Positional Play and Tactics are two different sides of the same coin.  They are different.  They are thought about differently.  but you don't have one without the other.  In order to pull of a tactic, your pieces must be in the right position.  On the other hand, many of your positional ideas must have tactical justification.  An example is isolated d pawn positions.  If you have the isolated d pawn you must think about pushing the pawn during EVERY move.  But pushing the pawn usually requires some sort of tactical justification, such as a threat, a pin, fork etc.  So you have to use tactics to achieve positional advantages.

Third: as far as books on tactics and how to train them, I agree with Dan Heisman.  I made a post a while back that you participated in on Tactical Thought Process.  But after much thought I've decided one doesn't need or want a tactical through process beyond looking for the tactic itself through

Critical Squares:

• Weak Squares
• Weak Pawns
• Weak Squares around King
• Hanging Pieces
• pieces, pawns or squares which are equally attacked and defended

Once you find the tactic all you need is Checks, Captures, and Threats.  The reason for this is to keep it simple and to reduce time looking for tactics because the general consensus is if you haven't found the tactic within the first two minutes of looking, you probably aren't going to find it whether it's there or not.  So the best thing to do is to make tactical recognition a habit through studying tactical motifs.  This entails studying the same tactical ideas over and over again until you have them memorized and you automatically recognize them over the board.  You want it to become a habit, to where you can't help but see the tactics.

Heisman thinks there are about 2000 tactical patterns a person must know and he lists the following books as probably having all of them.

• Chess Tactics for Students - John Bain
• The Chess Tactics Workbook - Al Woolum
• Winning Chess Strategy for Kids - Jeff Coakley
• Back to Basics: Tactics - Dan heisman
• The Winning Way - Bruce Pandolfini
• Winning Chess Traps - Ivering Chernev
• Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess - Bobby Fischer. 
• Starting Out: Chess Tactics and Checkmates - Chris Ward
• Checkmate for Children - Keven Stark
• Art of the Checkmate - Georges Renaud and Victor Kahn

Now, truth be told all of those books have more than 2000.  It's closer to 4000 tactics puzzles but within all of them should be the 2000 tactical motifs you need.  Honestly though, that's a lot of money.  So doing it that way is up to you.

For myself I'm building up a file of tactical motifs to study.  I have the Bain book and I'm getting all of those out of there, its about 350 problems.  I'm using Predators at the Chessboard 1-2 by Ward Farnesworth  which has over a thousand problems in all including 300 forks and 200 discoveries.  The good thing about the Predators books is they can be found online for free at chess-tactics.org.  Plus I am using Chess by Polgar which has something like 3000 checkmate patterns so I think checkmates are covered.  I also have Winning Chess tactics by Seirawan.  So i think with these books I'm covered and its a lot cheaper.  Plus I used Tactics Trainer a lot as well.  Just set the program to 400-500 elo in the settings and go over all the patterns for a week.  The push it up a hundred points.  Keep doing that until you get stuck, then start over.

So for books I'm personally using:

• Predators at the Chessboard 1-2- Farnsworth
• Chess tactics for Students - Bain
• Winning Chess Tactics - Seirawan
• Chess - Polgar
• Tactics Trainer- Chess.com

Hope this helps.

I dislike playing against the KID so..

One advantage IMO of 1.Nf3 is

 1.Nf3...Nf6  2.g3..g6  3.b4

I like b4 here instead of on move 2 since black has commited to g6/Bg7 instaed of being able to play 1.Nf3..Nf6 2.b4..e6 even though this is = for white it feels like a polish opening

but in the line  1.Nf3...Nf6  2.g3..g6  3.b4

I can avoid main line KID and play an english where I already have in b4 without wasting time preping it with a3,Rb1, Ect

If you enjoy playing against the KID then my post is irrelevent

Thanks all.

Thanks, I'll make a note of that book too.