♞Reflex Chess

1.e4 e5, and the five ways it goes wrong

Both sides put a bishop on the c-file diagonal, both aim at a square defended once, and the game is decided by who opens the centre at the right moment.

Open Games share one structural fact and it explains most of their tactics: f7 and f2 are each defended by a king and nothing else until somebody castles, and both sides develop a bishop that points straight at them. Everything else -- the gambits, the knight jumps, the pawn breaks -- is an argument about whether the attacker gets there before the defender arrives.

The five skills here run from the slowest version of that argument to the fastest. The Quiet Italian shuts the centre and waits twenty moves. The Evans and Scotch Gambits pay a pawn to have it settled by move ten. The middlegames look different and the tactical vocabulary is the same one throughout.

Every motif in Open Games

Work through the section in order 1.e4 e5, and the fight over f7 that starts on move three. Five graded levels per motif, four positions a lesson. Open the course

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