beginners opening

Hello everyone
I’m a beginner and I’m wondering what openings should I learn and how? There are so many and every time I try to learn one I get lost in the variations.
I can’t seem to be consistent and I’m not able to win a 1600 lvl computer.
Thanks :)

Gotham chess has all the videos youll need

I’ve been seeing his videos and I love it! But still I’m having trouble memorizing them and I get lost with all the different variations and openings

I highly recommend the French against e4. - you have a Richelieu bishop and a confused Louis [-French king], but more than enough Musketeers on the queenside to make up for it.

---

Against d4 - it's a hard one, try thing until you find something you like.

As White - I personally play d4 - I enjoy the space edge, and have a good play against, basically any of Black's openings [there are a Lot, but they aren't all that strong - there's no advantage like space-advantage - beacuse it leads to piece-activity - which leads to checkmate, which leads to happiness, you get the point]

 

You don't need much memory for French - your opponent will play the Advanced (you'll probably win), or the Exchange (you'll probably yawn zzzZZz).

Do a quick search on the beginner's forum. This question has been asked quite a few times and you might find some interesting answers there. 

As a beginner, you don't have to learn an opening. Just learning a few moves out of your head won't make you a better player. If your opponent makes a mistake, you won't know what to do to take advantage of it. It's much more useful and better for improving if you try to follow the general opening principles (white wants to get e4 and d4, black wants to prevent white from getting that center; develop your pieces and get your king safe by castling). If you follow these principles as strictly as you can (developing your pieces once and not moving them before others have been developed except when you need to move them out of harm's way) you'll instantly play a good and healthy opening that will be a great start to the rest of the game. The time you don't spend on the opening can be spend on learning tactics and middlegame strategy. That might both be more interesting and more helpful to improve as well.

Thank you for your response :) I’m learning tactics and middle game strategy through the chess.com app lessons which did help me a lot although I find it hard applying those lessons in real chess games.
I try to implement the general opening principles but a lot of the times the position is confusing with many different viable options and I often find myself making the wrong choices.
I thought perhaps if I had better opening knowledge it would help me see and understand more out of the position but I find it difficult navigating through all the different variations in a specific opening.
I was wondering how does one study opening and what is the process that one does to memorize all the different variations

Thanks for all the help :)

Well, to study an opening well, you should look at games of strong players and try to see what their ideas are in certain positions. After all, if you know an idea, you might be able to use it in your own games too, even if the moves don't go exactly as they did in the games you've seen. If you learn openings this way, you don't have to memorize the moves that much either. Opening theory is a lot like this: someone has an idea with white and then later someone else finds a way to counter that idea with black. Then someone else finds a new idea again, etc. To study an opening effectively, you'd need a book with games with commentary to try and understand the ideas.

The hard part for a beginner is that these ideas can get quite complicated, while the beginner normally doesn't quite have the knowledge and the experience necessary to understand exactly what the idea is in the first place. Also, the opening ideas that get thought up usually translate to a bit of advantage to either player or an equal game if it's a good idea by black. It's not game winning, while an inaccuracy might spoil that tiny bit of advantage that you've studied so hard for. 

Considering that you're writing that you find some positions quite difficult to manage, what you might want to do rather than studying a whole new opening is to, first of all, look through all of your openings and really see if you've adhered to the opening principles (really look at all the moves and see if they were really necessary if they don't adhere to these principles), and secondly you can post a position after the game and ask for feedback on how you could play the position. That way you'll likely get new ideas you can work with during your next game. 

All in all though, you'll likely notice that not losing your own pieces and winning theirs will win you games much more often than a great strategy. If you just play natural good moves (tough enough in itself) and take your chances as they come, you're already looking at a massive improvement.

I’ll definitely give it a try! Thank you for all your help :)

Your answer is, in part, embedded in your question.

It's just too hard to memorize openings, particularly for those who are beginning, because there are just too many variations -- particularly when you playing against others who are also approximately on your level, because the will not play the same moves in the books.

This is the reason so many say "learn opening principles, not openings"  After learning principles, many of the openings will start to make sense, and feel natural, so you won't be memorizing.

Most games between players U1600 are decided on tactics -- for U1400 just about every game is decided on tactics (go back and look at your own most recent 5-10 losses).

My coach says simply: "any sound opening is fine".  That's why they are "sound."  Pick an opening that you enjoy and/or feel comfortable with.

That said, the respected and well published (12-14 books) instructor Dan Heisman, suggests that learning players should play the French and KID each for six months (not necessarily at the same time) because there are many pawn structures and basic strategies (e.g., break moves) that will occur in other openings.  Even for those who later abandon those openings, he says that all his students were happy for the experience.

Nevertheless, as they say, the key to getting to 1600 or so is "tactics, tactics, tactics"

Good luck!

Gotham Chess is crap.

Don't worry about memorizing lines of openings, it'll make your head spin.

Play slow time controls to you can look at positions and try to not drop pieces.

Memorizing lines of openings will indeed make your head spin.  We need to learn (or memorize) the basic ideas and principles of openings.

As far as slow time controls go:  interestingly enough, Heisman writes that games between 10 minutes and 25 minutes can actually be detrimental to one's chess.

The OP might want to check out his Novice Nook column on this: https://web.archive.org/web/20140627030447/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman115.pdf 
It's an interesting article, because he also list the benefits of playing blitz (efficient practice of openings, practicing seeing tactics quickly, etc.), as well as (and certainly) playing slow (30 minutes or more), and then explains why intermediate controls hinder growth.

#1
"what openings should I learn" ++ None at all. Focus on blunder prevention and tactics. Just bring your pieces into play and control the center.