Chess Opening Tutorial : Unusual First Moves

The category is Chess and the answer is '20 moves'. What's the question? One of the most obvious is 'How many ways are there to open a chess game?'

Our page on repertoire recommendations lists only six moves for the initial position : 1.d4, 1.e4, 1.c4, 1.Nf3, 1.f4, and 1.b3. What happened to the other 14? The initial position shares a feature with all chess positions : the legal moves do not all have equal value.

The following tables (at the bottom of this page and the top of the next) list the 20 possibilities for White's first move, together with their names. The names are from Chess Archaeology (see 'Suggested Reading'), where you'll find more names for many other opening variations.