Alapin vs. Closed Sicilian

I've tried the Alapin variation in a few games, and it seems to be rather effective against the Sicilian. Is the Closed Sicilian better for white? Which variation will give white the larger advantage?

Openings have not decied any of your games.  Your time would be better spent studying tactics, and opening principles.

Is there some reason to believe that an opening cannot influence the result of a game if it does not decide the game? Are players frequently advised to play over sample games? Why would it be a bad idea to do some examination of games involving a particular opening? Both c3 and closed seem to be respected enough to be reasonable choices for amateurs. If, for any reason, a player is more comfortable with one, that should probably be the choice. If a player really cares, c3 seems to be the more respected option of the two. For  example, GM Sveshnikov wrote a whole book about it. That could be seen as a plus, but it has its negative aspect - an opponent is more likely to know stuff about it.

I like Alapin with Na3. 

Can blunders be avoided more often if one has sometimes managed to avoid a difficult position in the opening?

"... Review each of your games, identifying opening (and other) mistakes with the goal of not repeatedly making the same mistake. ... It is especially critical not to continually fall into opening traps – or even lines that result in difficult positions ..." - NM Dan Heisman (2007)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627062646/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman81.pdf

About half my losses in daily games began with a botched opening and never fully recovering.

Personally I don't like playing Black against the Alapin, but I've been doing OK with 1.e4...c5.  2.Nf3....d6.

3.c3....Nf6.   4.e5.....Nd5

 An easy Position is also obtainable if you are the better player, and you dont know so much theory of a particular opening. 

I am no good player at all, but here are some tricks, which made my life easier in the past, regarding Openings:

Complications come from tension in the position.

If someone know the theory in the tensionful position much better then the other one, and both are equally good in playing chess, avoiding the tension, or better releasing the tension should result in equal chances regarding gameplay. (not theoretical)

so my idea of openings i dont know, and might trap me:

-a gambit --> return the pawn or dont accept the pawn

-dont grab to much space as white, especially in structures, where one side chooses to not grab any centralspace in the first move. for example instead of going for e4 and d4 against an early g6, you could only develop with d4 e3 or something, now your already equalize, but hey your equally strong player.

- exchange early central pawnbreaks. it usually equalizes for black, and thats usually the point where theory gets really thin. 

These general things are/were my strategies against openings I had never seen or in which i felt certain uncomfort.

There are general guidelines how to work in the opening, which you can follow. All these guidelines are in the chess.com lections section.

I think some players have difficulty with the effort to be the better of two players in a game. 

There's nothing wrong with it. Just a different pawn structure.

Now that's kind of harsh. What are you basing this on.  Engine users are quite often rated well over 2000 and have 100/1 win/loss records

I think my rating below 1000 would say otherwise...

maybe a bad engine 

I shouldn't have brought up my variation against the Alapin.  Go with the IM.  I would rank myself in the 7th, maybe 8th percentile in openings. Just to clarify; that's the top 93%.