I have not made it my aim here to try and give an extensive or definitive coverage of all known atomic theory. I have several reasons for this:

1) It would take a lot of time and effort on my part.

2) New moves are being found all the time and so it would require constant updates.

3) I, and I'm sure other players, am often proud of finding important new moves and would rather that they were not handed out before I could reap the rewards in games.

4) I feel that far too many players, especially recently, are beginning to focus almost entirely on opening theory, while ignoring the more interesting parts of the struggle, and I do not wish to encourage this.

However I do not think that the opening should be ignored and so I have decided to give the beginning moves of those opening lines that I feel are the most important/critical. I hope that this can act as an introduction to atomic openings that players can further build upon with their own experiences.

I have ignored most of the weaker lines and have refrained from giving definite evaluations on the majority of these lines as either I do not want to give out this information or, most often, I really do not know myself. In order to understand the majority of these lines a reasonable understanding of many of the 'Tactical Ideas' is very important, so if you have not looked at this section yet I recommend that you do before continuing.

Opening section:

A. 1.Nf3
B. 1.Nc3
C. 1.Nh3
D. 1.e3
(1.e4 and 1.d4 are also played quite often, sometimes together and sometimes followed by a knight move. When played together black has many different options and should try and find a set-up which they are happy with. When followed by a knight move the line could transpose to other lines, although black often has opportunity to add original flavour.)