Am I good enough to look at openings?

Rated approx 1200 for virtually my whole life but do feel I improve albeit extremely slowly.

I play the London opening or french defence as often as possible as I dont know anything else, question is am I restricting my improvement by sticking to these openings or should I ignore the opening completely and just focus on basic tactics and ways to improve my tactics?

Thanks in advance, this is my first post so please go easy on me

London is fine at 1200 I wouldn't play French yet just play 1.e4...e5

Thanks for the response, in view of your comment am I best looking at something along the lines of the italian or spanish opening or should I just literally play e5 and develop accordingly?

I have had many of the same questions as you, but haven’t played a game (other than an occasional, quick, and rather careless game against lower levels of the computer) in quite a while now.

Most of what I have heard recommended at our level for openings is to answer 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 with 2.Nc6 ... in that case you would have to play against all those lines you mentioned, though some choose to play the Petroff (2...Nf6) and maybe there are those who choose the Philidor Defense.

The Petroff is easier to get into because it is a move 2 variation for Black whereas playing 2...Nc6 opens you up to playing against the Scotch, Ruy Lopez, Italian Game, Four Knights, etc, but I have seen and heard quite a few coaches who say that avoiding 2...Nc6 will hinder your chess development because it limits the types of positions and pawn structures you will encounter, and you will be in generally more passive and cramped positions for a while if you choose 2...Nf6 rather than playing 2...Nc6 in the open games after 2.Nf3.

Interestingly, I have heard a couple master level players say that playing chiefly according to the philosophy of “I will know my opening lines better than my opponent” will hinder your chess development when that is the main reason you choose to play a particular line, but it seems to sell books well enough.

For some of the same reasons, I have heard many coaches recommend against playing the London as White ... playing on auto-pilot, limiting exposure to pawn structures, not fighting enough for the initiative when you can seize it.

Overall, what you decide to choose may depend on whether your goal is long-term improvement (over years or decades) or if you want to increase your winning in the short and intermediate term, though at the price of a sooner plateau and the need to switch to the mainlines you avoided in the first place.

For me looking at / learning openings was part of the fun even from fairly early on in my chess playing.

Yes your good enough I would say exposing yourself to new ideas can help your development.

 

Also +1 to everything  danny said above me

Excellent, You shared your thoughts.

Improving at chess is not just about one thing. You have to work a little on everything. Do some opening analysis (Make sure to save it) Do tactics (In proper way, If you train yourself in wrong way then your intuition is built wrong) After playing games, Make sure to analyse it yourself only then with engine and very important, Note down your mistakes, Try your best to avoid them in upcoming games.

Cheers!

If you play sound moves, chances are you will play a well known opening anyway. The thing about e4 e5 is that people have been playing it forever, so any reasonable move most likely has theory behind it already. 

Play what you think makes sense and afterwards you can play through old games and see how masters of the past played in those positions.  Trying to decipher how Morphy handled the same positions might be more instructive than an opening book at the moment... It would be more fun anyway.

look at whatever you like!

Thanks for the advice guys, will definetly look more towards keeping it open and simple ideas.