It's pretty common for people to have a dominant hand, but many people don't realize that they also have a dominant eye. Righties tend to have a dominant right eye, lefties the opposite.  Indeed, this has long been appreciated in sports, such as American baseball.  Young players are taught to bat with their dominant eye facing the pitcher.  It's why so many players field and throw righty, and bat lefty.  Batting lefty positions their dominant eye so they can pick up on the spin on the ball faster.  

Recently, a group of Russian scientists announced that they've been studying this phenomenon for application to other pursuits, including as a test subject, chess.  I'll spare you the scientific details, but they basically showed through repeated cohort studies that people with dominant right eyes play better and find tactics more easily on the right side of the board, while lefties naturally do better on the left side.  

They claim that this finding explains why some players do better with certain openings and not so well with others.  Righties should choose openings where the play is on the right side of the board.  Thus, for example, as White, righties should play for a kingside attack and will generally do well with 1.e4.  In the Queen's Gambit, they should avoid the minority attack and instead play for central expansion with f3 and e4.  (As many of today's GMs are right-handed, this may help to explain why, subconsciously, the minority attack has gone out of fashion.)  Lefties reverse the process and should be playing White openings starting with 1.d4 and 1.c4.  

The same holds true for Black.  Against 1.e4, righties should stick with the Sicilian and certain lines of the Closed Ruy Lopez (cxd4).  Lefties should play the Marshall Attack, the ..Bd6 lines of the Petroff and perhaps the Nimzovich.  Against 1.d4, righties should steer towards the Benoni, the Benko, and the Gruenfeld, while lefties are best served by the King's Indian and the Dutch.  

All of this is still a bit speculative, but the scientists insist that it is based on sound theory.  I don't know that I believe it, but it has me wondering and we'll have to see what their further research brings.  In the meantime, can anyone else come up with any openings that might be suitable for righties or for lefties?

LeeRoth