Building a repertoire

I think I've reached a stage in my chess career where I need to start thinking about building an opening repertoire.  Has anyone done this before?  Do you have any suggestions for how to get started?

Along these lines, would it be crazy to build up a "group repertoire", where we always play the same set of opening and try to get very good at them?  Or would you prefer to play many different kinds of positions in vote chess games for more variety at the cost of perhaps not playing them as well?

We wouldn't have to work out our entire repertoire up front of course.  Maybe it's as simple as saying something like this:

- with black: play king's indian defense as often as possible, trying to transpose even when white isn't playing ball

- with white: play d4 and, say, the Colle system (e3, Nd2, Bd3, playing for a break in the center with e4)

Now we would simply play the opening with these ideas in mind, and try to stick to the same lines in the games we play.  Ideally we'd play these openings in our individual games and post these in the forums for comments and analysis.

I chose the King's Indian and Colle systems because they can be played against a wide variety of responses.  I'm open for anything though, especially with white.  How is this sounding so far?

One nice thing about the King's Indian is that Daniel Rensch plays this so we'll get to see our defense played and explained in his videos.  Maybe we should simply say that our repetoire is whatever Rensch plays?  This would have us playing 1.e4 looking for a Scotch game as white.

It all sounds good to me as I am the lowly student to you teachers. I can learn from any direction you all decide to go.:)

Lol, Gastroc, you're not lowly, sheesh ;) I'm learning a ton from playing with you guys (and by ton, I mean TON).

As to opening repetoire... I just play what feels right to me and stick to it. They say that you should choose an opening and play it and study it for at least one year before changing your mind. I just chose d4 over e4, cause it's more tactical generally, and then when I played against the computer, or against friends, I began to play this Bf4, and it really started to grow on me. I checked it up on the computer, and found that it was its own little opnening with a name and everything, which made me very happy. Since then I've played it all the time, and studied and observed the resultant midgame stuctures, and common lines, weak pieces, tension lines, and how to play aggressively and defensively.

I think that you should choose between d4 or e4, or play both and choose a system that you want to enter into (king's indian, scotch, colle, zukertort, grand pre, trompowsky attack, to name a few of the many) and then once you choose play them out for a while and observe the mid-game structures, and then endgame structures. Just choose what is comfortable to you, and that stays relatively close to opening theory. Once you are really comfortable with an opening, you can start making crazy moves, to test your knowledge of the position. The whole point of this game, for me, is to have fun; so have fun choosing an opening repetoire!

ok, seems like we are all in agreement then.  We're going to try to build an opening repertoire as a group, and that repertoire so far is:

- king's indian / robatsch as black

- 1.d4 as white

This is just the very beginning of our repertoire obviously, we'll fine-tune it when forced to in the vote chess games we play.  Right now we're deciding how to handle d4 d5.  Blackmar-Diemer?  Queen's gambit?  London system?  The votes will decide!  :)

repertoire update:

 - king's indian / robatsch as black 

 - blackmar-diemer as white (d4 d5 e4)