Part One covered the mechanics of the game: how it ends, basic openings, basic endgames, tactics, and beginner strategy. Part Two builds on that foundation for players roughly in the 800–1200 rating range — if you're below it the material may stretch you a little, and if you're well above it (say 1600–1700) there is still plenty here to sharpen. Across the intermediate chapters you will:
This chapter starts with openings, because the opening choices you settle on now shape how much of the rest of the game you get to play on your own terms. None of the material in Part Two requires you to have mastered Part One first, but it does assume you are comfortable with the basics: how games end, the golden opening moves, basic mates, and the elementary tactics already covered.
There is no single "correct" opening. What suits you depends on your personality, how much you enjoy memorizing lines, how much study time you have, and your natural style — solid and principled versus sharp and attacking. Nobody else can make that choice for you, but one criterion holds for everyone.
Play the same opening repeatedly rather than switching every game. Repetition is what turns an opening from a memorized recipe into real understanding: you start recognizing your opponents' good and bad tries against it, and the resulting positions become familiar territory instead of a fresh puzzle each time.
Rozman compares this to learning to box: he trains as an orthodox fighter, left hand forward, and everything he has built sits on that one foundation. Switch to a southpaw stance overnight and he'd trip over his own feet — years of work wasted. Constantly changing your opening does the same damage. Whatever first move you build on, d4, e4, or the rarer c4 (the English), the point is to build on it game after game rather than starting from zero each time — and once you've committed, chess engines and the databases built into most online platforms become useful study tools, showing which replies are common at your level and how well each scores.
With White you get to choose the first move, so pick one that actually leads somewhere and commit to it. A random flank push is "consistent" too, but it teaches you nothing useful. Two first moves cover almost everyone's needs: 1.d4 and 1.e4.
1.d4 can lead into the London System, the Queen's Gambit, the Trompowsky, and more. Its practical appeal is that one setup — the London — can be aimed at almost anything Black tries:
Because the London reaches similar structures move after move, you end up far better rehearsed in it than the opponent across from you, who only meets it occasionally. Chapter 10 works through the plan in more detail.
1.e4 is different: there is no one setup that answers everything. Black's two most common replies force very different middlegames, so an e4 player needs at least two plans ready.
Add the Caro-Kann, the French, the Modern, the Pirc, and the Scandinavian to the list of serious tries against 1.e4, and it is clear why e4 asks for more homework than d4. The reward is a wider variety of positions and, at club level, some genuinely high win-percentage lines for White — but each one only pays off if you actually put in the study, because an unprepared e4 player can be worse off than a well-drilled London player.
Playing Black is structurally harder to prepare for, because White chooses the first move and you must have an answer ready. It sounds worse than it is: Rozman puts it at around 99 percent of games opening with only a small handful of different first moves, and if White wastes moves in the opening instead, the golden-moves ideas from Chapter One let you seize the advantage immediately.
The most common White try by far is 1.e4:
The catch is that a reply built for 1.e4 is useless against 1.d4, and neither helps against a flank opening such as the Réti (1.Nf3) or the English (1.c4):
Some players build a dedicated reply for each of these; others don't have the time, and that's reasonable too. One escape from preparing a separate reply for every White try is a setup-based opening — a fixed arrangement of pawns and pieces you aim for regardless of what White does. The King's Indian / Pirc setup is the classic example:
Choosing this setup saves real study time, since you can aim for it against almost anything White plays. The trade-off is that it might bore you, or simply not fit how you like to attack a position.
A single setup is a study-time shortcut, not a guarantee. Losing something like seven games out of ten with it is real data that it doesn't suit your style — don't force it just because it's convenient.
This is why Black is the harder color to prepare: with White you can learn one or two openings and play them every game, while with Black you'll regularly meet an opponent who has drilled their favorite setup a thousand times. You need serious preparation with both colors, because nobody lets you pick which one you get.
It's also worth glancing at what's common at skill levels above your own — not to copy it, but because it's educational. At the top level, "main line" openings run extraordinarily deep: elite players can know their first thirty moves without stopping to think, and one Najdorf Sicilian position is reached only after 41 moves of known theory, yet it has occurred hundreds of times in master-level games.
You are extremely unlikely to need that depth. What works for a grandmaster often isn't what wins games for a beginner or intermediate player — so choosing sound-but-less-common tries instead can walk a prepared opponent into unfamiliar territory early, which is exactly the edge worth having.
None of this means main lines are wrong to learn eventually. It means an opening that scores well but isn't the most popular choice at the top can be a genuine practical weapon: your opponent has to solve real problems instead of reproducing memorized moves. The next two chapters put this into practice — one plan for White, one for Black, chosen for what works at club level.
Choose openings for both colors that fit your personality, memory, available study time, and style — a thirty-minutes-a-day player and a tournament competitor shouldn't necessarily study the same repertoire. Whatever you choose, commit the way Rozman commits to his orthodox boxing stance: switching constantly starts you back at zero, while sticking with one plan lets you build on it, and engines and online databases can help you study it properly. With White, pick one first move and build depth in it; the London is a low-maintenance option for 1.d4 that funnels almost any Black reply into familiar territory, while 1.e4 demands more study but rewards it with sharper, more varied positions and strong practical win rates. With Black, prepare for the White replies you'll actually face most, or adopt a setup-based defense such as the King's Indian / Pirc to cut the workload — but watch your results, and abandon a setup that clearly isn't working. Studying what's popular above your own level is useful background, but chasing grandmaster-depth main lines is not; a sound, slightly less common choice can be worth more because it takes opponents out of their preparation. It is better to know a small number of openings deeply than a little about many. The next two chapters give concrete recommendations: one plan for White, then for Black.
Repetition builds real familiarity: you learn the middlegame plans, recognize opponents' good and bad tries, and stop treating every game as a fresh puzzle.
He trains as an orthodox boxer and says switching stances overnight would wreck everything he's built. Constantly changing your opening does the same damage: you never build on a stable foundation.
Almost regardless of what Black plays, White reaches the same Bf4-plus-pawn-triangle structure, so the resulting positions stay familiar. That means far less preparation than an opening where Black's reply changes the whole plan.
There is no London-style setup that works against every reply. Black's common answers (1...e5, the Sicilian 1...c5, plus the French, Caro-Kann, Modern, Pirc, and Scandinavian) lead to very different middlegames, so White needs a separate plan for each.
A fixed arrangement of pawns and pieces — like the King's Indian / Pirc — that Black aims for regardless of White's first move, saving preparation time. The downside is reduced initiative: Black reacts rather than fights for space, and it may not suit your style.
It stops White from playing e5 and kicking the Black knight off f6, which would disrupt the whole setup before it is complete.
Treat that as real evidence the setup doesn't fit your style, rather than sticking with it purely because it's convenient.
Popularity drops fast once you leave the most common choice. An opponent is far less likely to have studied deeply against the rarer move, even though it's perfectly sound.
No. That depth of preparation is built for top-level competition; what wins games at that level usually isn't what wins games for a beginner or intermediate player.
Yes — a smaller, simpler repertoire (say, one setup-based Black defense and the London for White) is more realistic than deep preparation against every possible reply.
They show which replies are common at your rating level and how well each scores, so you pick a sound line and check moves instead of guessing.