It is not uncommon for amateurs to be told not to spend time on studding openings, however, amateurs are advised to learn opening theory. It is also not uncommon for amateurs to spend a large percentage of their time studding openings. .

Once you understand opening theory, in theory you should be able to come out of the opening phase of a game nearly equal or better. However if you do not, if you come out of an opening badly what do you do then? This is what happened to me.

In the end I came to realize that although I understood Opening Theory in general, I did not understand the nuances, why one move was better than another. I realized then that the Openings were nothing more than the best applications of Opening Theory and that by studding openings I could gain a deeper understanding.

To minimize the amount of study needed I decided to learn one opening for white and one opening for black. For white it took me awhile to settle on the Bishops Opening. The reason I picked it was because you can play 2 Bc4 to almost any response to e4. I then studied and played a number of variations. The Berlin Defense is what you will encounter most often, which is based on 2…Nf6, attacking the e pawn. In some arcane tome I found the response 3Qe2. This variation led to a position that I understood and played well. Soon I learned to get to the same position almost regardless of blacks first few moves. Thus I was able to apply the same plan to most of my games as white. In this way I was able to get through the opening phase and have a plan for the middle game. After about a year I became board with this opening and have since been learning others.

For black I chose the French. Often even if my opponent played 1d4, by playing 1…e3, I can get the French. As my rating increased I did have to learn the Nimzo-Indian and the Queen’s Indian. I still play the French as my primary when playing black,

In summary if you are not coming out of the opening well you may want to consider studding some openings. Keeping in mind these principles:

Minimize the number of openings you learn to 2 or 3.
Select variations that results in positions you understand, or imbalances you like.
Gain an understanding of the plan associated with the resulting position and how to take advantages of the resulting imbalance.

When I say learn an opening I am only speaking of learning the first 10 or so moves, until all the pieces are active. Most of the time your opponent will not stay in book that long, or they will be using a data base and not really understand the resulting position. The lower level opening books such as Starting Out The French and The French Explained that teach you the opening by annotating complete games are much better, than the books like Play The French, as you gain a better understanding of the plan behind the various variations.

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