Chess Openings Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
110 free Chess Openings trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This chess openings trivia quiz asks you to name openings from their moves and to explain where those names came from. It covers the big main lines everyone meets, including the Ruy Lopez, the Sicilian, the French, the Queen's Gambit and the King's Indian, alongside gambits, offbeat first moves and joke openings such as the Bongcloud and the Grob. The early questions are ones a club player should breeze through. Later ones get into opening history: which sea captain a gambit is named after, why 1.b4 is called the Orangutan, which world champion revived the Berlin as a drawing weapon, and which openings appeared in the Deep Blue matches. If you already play a/chess trivia on BrainPickle, this is the specialist follow-up. Every answer is checked against the Wikipedia article for the opening in question, and each question carries a citation. Play it solo, or use it as an opening-theory round at your chess club.
30 of 110 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which chess opening begins 1.e4 c5?
Sicilian Defence
Sicilian Defence breaks the symmetry at once instead of mirroring White's pawn, which makes for sharp, unbalanced games; Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov both relied on it.
Q 02Which chess opening begins 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5?
Ruy Lopez
Ruy Lopez: the bishop attacks the knight that guards Black's e-pawn, and the opening takes its name from a 16th-century Spaniard who analysed it in a 1561 book.
Q 03Which chess opening begins 1.d4 d5 2.c4?
Queen's Gambit
Queen's Gambit is a gambit in name only: if Black takes the c-pawn, White can win it back, and trying to cling to the extra pawn leaves Black worse off.
Q 04Which of these begins 1.e4 e6, and is known for a solid but cramped position with a 'bad' bishop on c8?
French Defence
French Defence takes its name from an 1834 correspondence match between London and Paris, in which the Paris players adopted 1...e6.
Q 05Which opening begins 1.e4 e5 2.f4, with White offering a pawn to pull Black's e-pawn off the centre?
King's Gambit
King's Gambit drew a famous article from Bobby Fischer, 'A Bust to the King's Gambit', which claimed the opening was refuted, yet Fischer went on playing it himself as White.
Q 06Which chess opening begins 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4, placing the bishop on the diagonal that eyes f7?
Italian Game
Italian Game: the bishop aims at f7 because that pawn is guarded only by Black's king; Italian masters were already studying the opening in the 16th century.
Q 07Which chess opening starts with the flank-pawn move 1.c4?
English Opening
English Opening: Ding Liren won game 12 of the 2024 world championship with it, levelling the match a day after Gukesh had taken the lead.
Q 08Which opening, a favourite of Fischer and Kasparov, begins 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 with ...Bg7 and ...d6 to follow?
King's Indian Defence
King's Indian Defence was long distrusted for handing White the centre, until Soviet players such as David Bronstein showed that Black could let the centre form and then strike at it.
Q 09Which of these begins 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4, pinning the knight to prevent e4?
Nimzo-Indian Defence
Nimzo-Indian Defence: Black is ready to trade the bishop for the pinned knight and saddle White with doubled c-pawns; Aron Nimzowitsch, its namesake, did much to make the idea popular.
Q 10Which 19th-century favourite has White give up the b-pawn with 4.b4 to gain time against Black's bishop on c5?
Evans Gambit
Evans Gambit: after lying out of favour for most of the 20th century it was revived by Garry Kasparov, who used it to beat Viswanathan Anand in 25 moves in 1995.
Q 11Which defence, sometimes called the Center Counter, begins 1.e4 d5?
Scandinavian Defense
Scandinavian Defense got its old name because Black counters in the centre at once; the price is that after 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 the queen has to spend another move retreating.
Q 12Which hypermodern reply begins 1.e4 Nf6, inviting White's pawns forward so they can be attacked later?
Alekhine's Defence
Alekhine's Defence was sprung by Bobby Fischer in the 1972 world championship, where he beat Boris Spassky with it in game 13.
Q 13Which of these begins 1.d4 f5, a wing-pawn reply that gains kingside space but loosens Black's king?
Dutch Defence
Q 21Which of these begins 1.f4, and can be met by the risky From Gambit 1...e5?
Bird's Opening
Bird's Opening is named after Henry Bird, the 19th-century master who championed 1.f4; the move grips the e5 square at the cost of slightly weakening White's own kingside.
Q 22Which chess opening, revived by Kasparov in the late 20th century, begins 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4?
Scotch Game
Scotch Game got its name from the 1824 correspondence match between the chess clubs of Edinburgh and London, in which the opening was put to the test.
Q 23Which chess opening begins 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3, originally intended to prepare a delayed f4 thrust?
Vienna Game
Dutch Defence uses the f-pawn to fight for the e4 square, so White cannot easily build a full pawn centre; Paul Morphy often chose it when he faced 1.d4.
Q 14Which set-up has White play d4 and Bf4 regardless of Black's reply, usually with e3 and c3?
London System
London System is named after the great London tournament of 1922, where the set-up caught the eye of the elite; because one scheme fits almost anything, there is little theory to learn.
Q 15In which line of the Two Knights Defense does White sacrifice a knight on f7 to drag Black's king into the open?
Fried Liver Attack
Fried Liver Attack is so dangerous in practice that Black usually avoids it altogether, playing 5...Na5 instead of recapturing the pawn on d5.
Q 16Which joke chess opening runs 1.e4 e5 2.Ke2, with White's king stepping forward on move two?
Bongcloud Attack
Bongcloud Attack breaks every opening rule, blocking White's own pieces and giving up castling, yet Hikaru Nakamura has beaten grandmasters with it in online speed games.
Q 17Which chess opening begins 1.g4, a first move widely rated among White's very worst?
Grob's Attack
Grob's Attack is named after the Swiss master Henri Grob, who analysed 1.g4 at length and kept playing it even though few other masters ever trusted it.
Q 181.b4 is nicknamed after which animal?
Orangutan
Orangutan: Savielly Tartakower gave 1.b4 the nickname in 1924 after a trip to the zoo during a tournament; its more sober name is the Polish Opening.
Q 19Savielly Tartakower gave 1.b4 its animal nickname after visiting which zoo during a 1924 tournament?
Bronx Zoo
Bronx Zoo: Savielly Tartakower went there during the great New York tournament of 1924, and by his own account the visit inspired both the move and its nickname.
Q 20The Evans Gambit is named after William Davies Evans, who was what by profession?
A Welsh sea captain
A Welsh sea captain who commanded mail packet ships, Evans learned chess only as an adult and famously played his gambit against the strong master Alexander McDonnell in London.
Vienna Game takes its name from the city where the knight move was already the fashion in the 1850s; Wilhelm Steinitz was among the Vienna-based masters who championed it.
Q 24Which symmetrical reply begins 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6?
Petrov's Defence
Petrov's Defence is named after Alexander Petrov, a 19th-century Russian master; the symmetry cannot last, because copying White once more with 3.Nxe5 Nxe4 is a known mistake.
Q 25Which reply, named after an 18th-century master, begins 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6?
Philidor Defence
Philidor Defence: its namesake preferred 2...d6 to the more common 2...Nc6, yet the opening came to be seen as solid but passive.
Q 26Which dubious but wild line begins 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f5, and is sometimes called the Greco Countergambit?
Latvian Gambit
Latvian Gambit is a tribute to players from Riga, above all Kārlis Bētiņš, who analysed the old line in the early 1900s and tested it in correspondence matches against other cities.
Q 27Which unsound line, also called the Queen's Pawn Countergambit, begins 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d5?
Elephant Gambit
Elephant Gambit is rated unsound because White can take either centre pawn and keep the advantage, so it survives mainly as a surprise weapon.
Q 28Which line begins 1.e4 e5 2.d4 exd4 3.c3, with White offering up to two pawns for rapid development?
Danish Gambit
Danish Gambit was popularised by a Danish master at the Paris tournament of 1867 and thrived for decades, but it lost favour in the 1920s once Black had learned how to defend.
Q 29Which chess opening begins 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5, sidestepping the Indian defences?
Trompowsky Attack
Trompowsky Attack: the bishop threatens to take the knight and double Black's pawns; the opening is named after Octávio Trompowsky, a Brazilian champion who played it in the 1930s and 40s.
Q 30Which pawn-sacrifice defence begins 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5?
Budapest Gambit
Budapest Gambit was first seen in a game played in the Hungarian capital in 1896, and it caught on after Milan Vidmar used it to beat Akiba Rubinstein.