So, lately I have been having problems of identifying a plan for openings.  How can I learn the basic ideas of an opening? I'm having trouble finding them, and I have heard that it is a good idea to know and understand the basics of any opening I plan on playing.  Thanks for your help .

well the ideal answer would be "books" but so many of them just go line crazy and dont tell plans at all!

what openings are you trying to find plans out of? maybe we can help you

Well an example would be the italian game.

To really know the opening getting a good book on it is key.

Wikipedia is a great help if you want to know a breif bit about it, John Watson's opening book is fantastic and has my reccomendation. But stay away from Seirawan's book on the openings (his other books are fantastic) as it doesn't explain much. The books above cover alot of openings and systems but for sharp lines you need a specialized book for that.

I personally love Evan's Gambit from that opening in blitz play. I'm not sure if I'd try it OTB (over the board), but it throws a lot of <1400 players off, and sets up for a very dangerous attack.

A great resource to read is Bishop's Bounty.

Most useful there, I found, though the videos total about 3 hours, are the full analysis videos conducted by a guy with a pretty awesome accent:

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Video 4

in my opinion, the best way is to just play an opening, and look at other games. You start to notice themes occur over and over. a lot of this is difficult to descrive in some book, you have to actually see it.

I played the italian game a looong time. I could start rambling randomly about various thematic ideas, common tactics, how to react to various plans, etc. but I really wouldnt know where to begin, there is too much information.

The position you showed, the opening is not quite decided yet. If black plays Nf6 then it is the two knights, a really fascinating and swamped with theory posiiton. If he plays Bc5, then it is the italian game. Its less interesting, but us still fun, and its not easy equality imo like many people seem to claim.