If a loss hits you harder than a win pleases you, play from solidity. These openings do not promise you a quick rout of your opponent - they promise something else: a position with no holes, extremely hard to refute, and a calm endgame in which other people make the mistakes.
All five starts have been in world champions' repertoires for decades precisely because it is hard to lose quickly with them. And not losing is already half of a tournament result. Each of them can be played through on the board so you can feel how firm it is.
A solid opening does not mean a passive one. Once you have a firm position, do not fall asleep: use the ...c5 and ...e5 counter-blows, trade off your opponent's active pieces and steer the game into a favourable endgame, where the soundness of the structure decides.
Against 1.e4, the Caro-Kann and the Petrov: both give a firm position with no weaknesses and release the tension quickly. Against 1.d4, the Slav Defence.
You can. A firm position with no weaknesses is the ideal base from which to wait for your opponent's mistake and squeeze out an edge in the endgame. That is how Capablanca, Petrosian and Karpov played.
The shut-in c8 bishop is its one drawback, and it is offset by a firm pawn chain and clear counterplay with ...c5. The position is hard to break open, and that is exactly what solidity means.
If you are just starting out, have a look at the rules of chess and how to set the board up.
Pairings are computed by bbpPairings, an open-source engine implementing the Dutch system by FIDE rules: score groups, floats on an odd field, colour alternation. Free to use.
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.
