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A good opening repertoire can be considered one of the most powerful weapons one can have in the game of chess. Grandmasters play exceptionally well because they have their personal opening repertoire and develop on it. Besides, they have a deep understanding of their own repertoire, which usually cannot be fathomed by other players. That is one reason not to imitate openings made by Grandmasters; but rather develop your own opening repertoire that you are comfortable with.

To build up an opening repertoire, it is advisable to consider your opening using the White pieces as the first step. As a start, try to limit yourself to 1.e4 and 1.d4 to avoid confusion. Besides, openings with other acceptable moves such as 1.c4 and 1.Nf3 can often lead to complications in terms of positioning if not developed the right way. Unknown openings such as 1.b4 and 1.Nc3 should be avoided at all cost because they often always limit the buildup of an opening repertoire.

You can develop two personal opening repertoires; one for 1.e4 and one for 1.d4. However, be warned that the large pool of variations that can stem from the 1.e4 and 1.d4 openings can confuse you if you try to remember too many. Generally, 1.e4 openings tend to result in tactical games while 1.d4 openings tend to result in positional games. It is important to note that this does not occur all the time and exceptions do exist; it is difficult to tell what type of game will result until about 10-12 moves.

After you have chosen the first move for White, try to think of a move Black will make as a good retaliation to your first move. A good retaliation is one that is tactically sound and does not contradict any basic chess principles. For example, if the first move was 1.e4, do not bother even trying to analyze retaliating moves by Black such as 1...h6, because moves such as those abandon development at the centre and hence render Black a weak position. Instead, analyze more probable moves such as 1...e5, 1...e6, 1...c5 and 1...d6.

The above discussion was focused at if you were playing for White. What do you do to build up an opening repertoire if you were playing for Black?

For Black, you should decide the most probable moves that White is most likely to play, such as 1.e4, 1.d4 and 1.c4. Just continue with the subsequent procedure like what you did for White, and select a good retaliation move to respond to White's opening move. Your aim is to produce various variations in a tree-like manner, ensuring that you are comfortable with every move.

A typical opening repertoire should be about 10-15 moves. Depending on your ability to remember the variations you played and your endgame knowledge, your opening repertoire can be more or less than the recommended moves. Ex-World Champion Garry Kasparov was said to have approximately 3000 variations stored in his brain, an amazing memory capacity!

In conclusion, it is good thing to keep track of the win-lose ratio using your different opening repertoires. It is very likely that one opening repertoire will allow you to play well, while another may deteriorate your game. That would be a good "wake-up call" to work on the repertoire that is not faring so well. All in all, remember to enjoy your chess games and all the best!

Reference:
1. http://chess.about.com/library /weekly/aa090702a.htm
2. http://chess.about.com/library /weekly/aa092102a.htm
3. http://chess.about.com/library /weekly/aa100502a.htm

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