By nature of the initial setup, the most powerful attackers are at the far corners, The Horses and the Cannon on the 2nd and 8th files. Whereas in the Centre, you have only on Pawn in front of the King. Therefore, attacking from the central with C2=5 (for convenience and consistency, we always start with the Cannon on the right-hand side) is the most common and effective opening move for Red. Black has several options in reply, leading to an immense variety of defending formations. We recommend that beginners should focus on the six presented in this chapter.

Sun Tzu in 《The Art of War》 said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.Abiding Sun Tsu’s principles, Red may start the game with E3+5, know as the Elephant opening. We shall briefly describe four common variations here.