Berlin Defense Chess Opening for Both White and Black

Berlin Defense

At some point in time, all chess players were amateurs to understand that whenever a grandmasters level player makes a move, they are playing every move after winning and losing so many games.

There are a few super cool chess opening strategies, tricks, traps, moves and ideas in Berlin Chess Defense which is a quite popular chess opening in the grandmaster's level. The Berlin Defence opening variation can be used by black as a counter against the veteran Ruy Lopez opening or the Spanish Game.

So accordingly, White start with Pawn to e4 and Black start with Pawn to e4. White will continue with Knight to F3, Black will counter with Knight to c3 and white ends with the Bishop to B5.

So the idea behind those moves for white is to indirectly attack the Pawn in the middle by threatening the Knight which defends it. Black has a lot of different options. Here the most natural move for Black is Pawn to a6 to attack the Bishop but one of the most defensive moves for Black is Knight to f6

This is the Berlin Defence opening which is played mostly at the grandmasters level. If you follow the games of Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen formally known as Magnus Carlsen, the Norwegian chess grandmaster who is the current World Chess Champion, the formation played quite regularly by him both for White and Black.

If you look at history, Vladimir Kramnik is the person who sorts of revived this opening against Garry Kasparov in the World Chess Championship 2000 but now it is a move used quite frequently by all the top grandmasters.

It is a very solid opening for beginners and most of the players find it very engaging. It is one of the best defences for Black against the Kings Pawn opening and at the same time for White, this opening gives players the option to decide how they want to proceeds. White can go for the sharp line to force a win or the player can go for the drawish kind of game by exchanging Queens quite early to play the move accordingly depending on the situation.

In this position, White has several options to proceed further. 3 of the most popular move are castling the King, pawn to d3 and Knight to c3. If you choose to play Knight to c3 you transpose into the Four Knight's Game which has a lot of different variations where both sides slowly arrange their pieces and originate a well-organized attack.

Short castling the King and pawn to d3 are the most popular move and they cover more than 80% of the game at the grandmasters level. Both of these moves have their own purpose. The move Pawn to d3 solidifies the position to enter into a game full of tactical motives and idea and the Short Castling the King move leach to a line where Queen are exchanged to enter into a theoretical middle game.