Hypermodernism turned opening theory on its head with one idea: a centre occupied by pawns is not only a strength but a target. In these openings you deliberately hand the centre to your opponent so as to attack it afterwards with pieces and pawn breaks.
We have gathered seven hypermodern starts for people who dislike playing «like everybody else» and want to take opponents off the beaten track. All of them come with a walkthrough on the board.
Hypermodernism calls for understanding rather than cramming: you have to sense when to undermine your opponent's centre and when to wait. In return these openings teach you to understand chess more deeply and reliably knock prepared opponents off balance.
It is an early twentieth-century school (Nimzowitsch, Réti, Grünfeld, Alekhine) which proposed controlling the centre with pieces from the flanks rather than occupying it with pawns. The idea: give your opponent a pawn centre and then attack it as a target.
More for those who have already mastered the basics: these openings call for a subtle understanding of playing against the centre. But they teach the most important idea of all superbly - that an occupied centre can be a weakness rather than a strength.
The Queen's Indian Defence: a firm position with almost no weaknesses, in which it is very hard to lose. For sharp play for a win the Grünfeld Defence suits better.
If you are just starting out, have a look at the rules of chess and how to set the board up.
There are no club or arbiter roles in the app: the create button is available to everyone. You can announce a tournament today and run it this weekend.
when there are more than ten players and nobody should be knocked out
when the field is small and fairness matters most
when you simply want to get together and play
Vibe Chess runs chess meetups - networking evenings in cities across Russia: Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and more. For companies we run corporate chess tournaments, and every city and format is gathered on the home page.
Open the Vibe Chess app - it has the schedule of meetups and chess events across the cities, the registration and your own tournaments.
