Goal: Learn key chess openings and how to counter them
Source: Chess.com Lesson

What I Learned
This week, I focused on exploring several less common chess openings and their counters through Chess.com’s lessons. The lesson was centred around “Offbeat Openings,” which are unusual strategies that can throw off unprepared opponents. I learned how to play and defend against openings like the English, Bird’s, Larsen’s, Orangutan, and Grob’s.

One of the main highlights was the English Opening, which starts with White pushing the c-pawn (left pawn in front of the bishop) up two squares. The knight is then developed behind that pawn, followed by activating the bishop to control long diagonals. This strategy felt unpredictable, which could be an advantage against players used to traditional openings.

The counters for each of these openings as Black were specific and tactical. For example:

• Against the English, the response is a one-square push of the d-pawn and a two-square push of the e-pawn to control the center.
• Against the Bird’s Opening, pushing the e-pawn one square and developing the left-side bishop early was recommended.
• Against Larsen’s Opening, the idea was to establish central control with a quick d-pawn advance and develop the knight for support.
• Against the Orangutan, the recommendation was more aggressive, pushing the d-pawn two squares and using the bishop and knight to challenge White’s early queenside pawn move.
• Against Grob’s Opening, the suggested strategy was standard center control, pushing both central pawns up two squares to quickly develop and counterattack.

This lesson gave me a broad look at how to react to rare and unusual first moves, which is something I hadn’t thought much about before.

Did I Find Success?
Honestly, the results were mixed. While I appreciated learning about offbeat openings, I ran into a big realization: most players don’t actually use these in casual games. The “Key Openings” lesson felt more theoretical than practical. It’s good knowledge to have in case I run into someone trying to catch me off guard, but it didn’t help me much in most games.

That said, I did find the English Opening a bit useful. I tried it out in a few matches and had some success. However, I struggled to develop it properly after the opening moves. Compared to something like the Italian Game, which I’ve played with all of my life, the English just felt harder to understand.

Because of that, I’ve decided to stick with the Italian for now and treat these alternative openings more as backup tools than primary strategies. Overall, this lesson didn’t lead to much progression in my practical skills, but it did help me gain awareness of The English opening and how to counter it.

What it was Like Learning From the Source
Chess.com’s lessons are clearly structured and more interactive than YouTube videos, but the videos themselves were not always exciting. They were somewhat dry, especially when discussing rarely used openings. However, the hands-on challenges that followed each lesson made the experience more engaging. These challenges let me test what I learned by walking through scenarios and choosing the best moves.

What stood out most was how the system responded to mistakes. When I made a wrong move, it sometimes let me know I was attempting an alternate, or it would just outright tell me I was wrong and allow me to retry. That feedback helped solidify the correct choices without making me rethink alternate choices.

At the end of each lesson, I received a score out of 3 crowns, which made the learning feel like a game and inspired me to redo the lesson until I got 3 crowns.

https://youtube.com/shorts/vWuNw-QVCb8

In summary, the source was effective in structure but less so in teaching applicable material.