chess opening

A chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game (the opening moves). Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings as initiated by White or defenses, as created in reply by Black. There are many dozens of different openings, and hundreds of named variants. The Oxford Companion to Chess lists 1327 named openings and variants. These vary widely in character from quiet positional play (e.g. the Réti Opening and some lines of the Queen's Gambit Declined) to wild tactical play (e.g. the Latvian Gambit and Two Knights Defense, particularly the Traxler Variation).
See more at Wikipedia.org...