GM Serper recently posted an article on chess.com with the basic premise that beginners should not open d4, c4, or Nf3, only e4. His point is that new players need to learn to play actively and tactically, and e4 is the way to help them do that.

Here's the article.

http://www.chess.com/article/view/po...l-chess?page=2

Obviously GM Serper is more qualified than me, but there are also many positional e4 openings like you'd find in d4. Different motifs, but still positional nonetheless. I would think a better way to say this is whether a kid wants to play e4 or d4, they need to make sure they're playing sharp lines and not shying away from tactical complications.

Maybe he means that e4 is more instructive from a classical perspective, such as opening lines for pieces, quick development, etc.

What do y'all think?

I think he's right, although i never followed his advice. When i took up 1. ...e5 recently, i had to learn all the "beginner's lines" because i never played them as a beginner. I moved from 1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 Bc5 3. Qh5 directly to 1. d4

The play after 1. e4 isn't necessarily more open, or more tactical, just more inline with general opening principles that are taught to beginners. Make way for your bishop, develop the kingside, get castled, etc. For example, how do you explain to a beginner using these principles that 2. c4 is the best move after 1. d4 Nf6?

Your 2.c4 example is a good one. d4 is certainly much less illustrative for the beginner.

Funny, I followed the same developmental path you did. About 6 seconds of e4, then onto d4.

I played 1.d4 growing up and won several games against bad opposition just because they were like "wtf why u no play e4?"

Then I realised I suck bigtime in closed positions.

I think there's some truth to this article. 1.e4 is much more intuitive. In 1.d4 openings, if Black screws up you often get some kind of positional clamp, whereas in 1.e4 openings it's more likely to lead to a direct mating attack. In 1.d4 a lot of the ideas are very positional in nature and will be harder for inexperienced players to fully understand. So for a complete beginner it makes sense to focus on 1.e4.

But I think to really develop as a player you need to have experience with both - and at higher levels it's also useful to be able to play both 1.e4 and 1.d4 in tournaments to make it harder for your opponents to prepare.

Same here.

Yeah, but you can play d4 for mate too.

What you definitely shouldn't do starting out is play the Botvinnik System of the English.

i have a friend that played e4 for like, one scholastic tournament and then switched to the botvinnik. 10 years later, it hasn't stopped, no matter how much i've tried to get him to switch to anything else.