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How you should build your repertoire

A repertoire should not depend on the level.
It is best to play sound openings right away, so that they last a lifetime and you accumulate more and more experience.
Fischer for example played Sicilian Defense, Najdorf Variation, King's Indian Defense, and Ruy Lopez from a young age and almost completely stuck to those, except for an occasional surprise or match tactics.

A repertoire should not depend on the level. It is best to play sound openings right away, so that they last a lifetime and you accumulate more and more experience. Fischer for example played Sicilian Defense, Najdorf Variation, King's Indian Defense, and Ruy Lopez from a young age and almost completely stuck to those, except for an occasional surprise or match tactics.

@tpr said ^

A repertoire should not depend on the level.
It is best to play sound openings right away, so that they last a lifetime and you accumulate more and more experience.
Fischer for example played Sicilian Defense, Najdorf Variation, King's Indian Defense, and Ruy Lopez from a young age and almost completely stuck to those, except for an occasional surprise or match tactics.

That is true. This is why I said sticking to openings similar to those you liked best at the upper beginner level---after a good amount of experimentation and research---is a good idea for intermediates; they will know them much better conceptually when they eventually need to prep more.

I do believe that some sounder openings are hard to learn at the beginner level, and it's kind of the situation of "an artist must learn the rules first to be able to break them." If you don't know development and central control very well as a beginner, you might not be able to play these sounder openings---let alone understand their complex ideas. It will be amazing if you do understand these complex ideas, but honing them through (per se) simpler, more principled openings first as a complete beginner is probably best.

As I said, upper beginners should narrow their repertoire down to a few openings for W/B combined. However, if they find that their preferred openings aren't suited to higher levels of play when they become intermediate, they can search for master games to find, learn, and understand concrete openings that will indeed last them a lifetime (as I mentioned in my blog).

I do agree with you that players should be learning concrete openings early on, but some of their ideas are very hard to grasp at the beginner levels, as aforementioned, and it's likely best to begin learning them at a level where you kind of understand how the opening and its ground rules work (upper beginner-lower intermediate).

@tpr said [^](/forum/redirect/post/90XA8eiR) > A repertoire should not depend on the level. > It is best to play sound openings right away, so that they last a lifetime and you accumulate more and more experience. > Fischer for example played Sicilian Defense, Najdorf Variation, King's Indian Defense, and Ruy Lopez from a young age and almost completely stuck to those, except for an occasional surprise or match tactics. That is true. This is why I said sticking to openings similar to those you liked best at the upper beginner level---after a good amount of experimentation and research---is a good idea for intermediates; they will know them much better conceptually when they eventually need to prep more. I do believe that some sounder openings are hard to learn at the beginner level, and it's kind of the situation of "an artist must learn the rules first to be able to break them." If you don't know development and central control very well as a beginner, you might not be able to play these sounder openings---let alone understand their complex ideas. It will be amazing if you do understand these complex ideas, but honing them through (per se) simpler, more principled openings first as a complete beginner is probably best. As I said, upper beginners should narrow their repertoire down to a few openings for W/B combined. However, if they find that their preferred openings aren't suited to higher levels of play when they become intermediate, they can search for master games to find, learn, and understand concrete openings that will indeed last them a lifetime (as I mentioned in my blog). I do agree with you that players should be learning concrete openings early on, but some of their ideas are very hard to grasp at the beginner levels, as aforementioned, and it's likely best to begin learning them at a level where you kind of understand how the opening and its ground rules work (upper beginner-lower intermediate).