London System or Italian Game: Which Opening Should a Beginner Learn First?

Learn the Italian Game first. It teaches you open-game fundamentals: fast development, fighting for the center, and the tactics that decide most beginner games. The London System is a fine opening, but it is a setup you can play on autopilot, and autopilot is exactly the skill you do not need more of at 800.

The move orders, so we are all looking at the same thing

The Italian Game: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4. Your bishop stares at f7, your knight attacks e5, and the center is already a live argument.

The London System: 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Bf4 (some players prefer 2.Bf4). You then build the same structure almost every game: e3, c3, Bd3, Nbd2, castle short. It is less an opening and more a floor plan.

What the Italian actually teaches you

The Italian is an open game. Pieces come out fast, the center gets contested immediately, and tactics appear by move six whether you invited them or not. That is the point. You will hang pieces. Your opponent will hang pieces. You will learn what a pin is because one just cost you a knight.

These are the lessons that transfer. Forks, pins, discovered attacks, weak f7 squares, the price of moving the same piece three times: the Italian serves all of it, every game, at beginner speed. You are not memorizing lines. You are learning why the principles exist by watching what happens when somebody breaks them.

What the London actually teaches you

The London teaches you a setup. That is genuinely useful: your first eight moves are nearly the same against almost anything, you rarely get blown off the board before move ten, and you can spend your clock on the middlegame instead of panicking at move four.

Here is the problem. The London is so reliable that you can play it for two years without ever asking why the bishop goes to f4. The opening keeps working, your understanding does not, and one day you are 1200 with the positional instincts of a vending machine. The London did not fail you. You just never had to think, so you did not.

So which one first?

Italian first. Play it with both results in mind: you are there to lose instructive games, not to win pretty ones. Every open-game beating you take is a tactics lesson you paid for with rating points instead of money, which is the better currency at this stage.

Then add the London as your second opening. It is the perfect tool once you already understand development and center control, because now the quiet setup is a choice instead of a hiding place. Plenty of strong players, including grandmasters, use the London for exactly this reason. It is not a bad opening. It is a bad first opening.

The honest summary

• Italian Game: more tactics, more open positions, more losses that teach you something, more transferable skill.
• London System: fewer disasters, less theory, real risk of learning nothing while your rating quietly plateaus.
• Order matters: Italian to learn chess, London to have a dependable second weapon.

One warning for each

If you pick the Italian, do not fall down the theory hole. You need 3.Bc4, a plan of castling quickly, and the principle of not grabbing pawns with your queen. You do not need fourteen moves of the main line anything.

If you pick the London anyway, fine, but force yourself to answer one question every game: what is my bishop on f4 actually doing right now? The day you cannot answer it is the day the opening started playing you.