My Favourite Opening: Accelerated London System

With chess, so much depends on which colour you get. With white you move first, which gives you the initiative — you can dictate the early flow of the game and play aggressively. With black, you're reacting, trying to equalise and look for counterplay. Neither is bad, they just require a completely different mindset.

This post is about my favourite white opening. It takes an already solid opening — the London System — and makes it sharper, more aggressive, and honestly more fun to play. It's called the Accelerated London System.

First — the Classic London

To understand what makes the Accelerated version special, you need to know the original. The Classic London System typically goes 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Bf4— you push your queen's pawn, develop your knight first, and then bring your dark-squared bishop out to control the centre.

It's a great opening, especially for beginners. The principles it teaches — controlling the centre, developing pieces early, playing positional chess — are fundamentals that carry into every other opening. I played it for months when I was around 800–1000 Elo and it genuinely helped me understand chess strategy. It's also very flexible — you can adjust your plan based on whatever your opponent does.

The Accelerated London

The key difference is one move. Instead of developing the knight first, you play 2.Bf4 immediately — getting your most important piece out a whole move earlier. This opens your diagonals fast, puts immediate pressure on the centre, and sets up an attacking structure on the kingside before black has had time to organise.

Walk through it move by move below:

Why it's so effective

Around 800–1200 Elo, players almost always castle kingside to get their king safe. That instinct is correct — but it walks straight into the London's strength. Your bishop on f4 is already staring at the queenside diagonal, and you have a natural plan of building pressure against the castled king. When your opponent castles into your setup, the game becomes a matter of converting your positional advantage before they figure out what's happening.

By the time you reach the middlegame, you typically have a serious advantage in both centre control and piece activity. Don't be afraid to be aggressive. This opening rewards active play. At higher levels you can even throw in sacrifices — a pawn or even a piece — to rip open the kingside if the timing is right. And always watch for blunders from your opponent. This is a tricky opening to face if you haven't seen it before, and blunders are extremely common.

Let's take a look where the pressure leads to a quick checkmate:

I've lost games with this opening too, usually because of playing against strong defensive openings or miscalculating and blundering. The position gives you a great start — it doesn't win the game for you.

Top players who use this opening

This isn't just a club-level trick — some of the strongest players in the world have mastered the London system and its variations at the elite level:

Learn more

Games I've played with this opening

A few of my own games on Chess.com where I played the Accelerated London. Have a look — you'll see the ideas from this post play out in real games showing tactical endgames and blunders.

If you're looking for a first serious opening to learn with white, this is my honest recommendation. It's principled enough to teach you real chess, and practical enough to win you games at any level. From trying out a lot of openings, I can say this one is the most fun to play if you are someone who loves positional plays like myself. Give it twenty games and you'll start to feel the ideas clicking into place. And if you want a game — you know where to find me :)