Best Openings?

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Avatar of acrowder1
What would y’all say are the best openings to run for a chess player at elo 500-800?
Avatar of chyss

As white the Scotch, open Sicilian, and exchange French and Caro Kann. As black, Petroff and Slav. 

Avatar of tygxc

Ruy Lopez 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 with black as well as with white.

Avatar of GraynSupreme
London for white (let the hate begin haha) and I like the Dutch and the Scandinavian for black
Avatar of gltn_0822

Wow

Avatar of magipi

Checking a few of your games, I'd say that openings are not a problem. If you want, you can google "chess opening principles", that will help, but even that is not really important. The only important thing is that you have to stop hanging pieces.

An example game where you came out of the opening fine, that started dropping pieces and the queen. 12. Qxd7+ is probably the worst move I've ever seen. And you made it in 2 seconds (??) with more than 8 minutes on the clock.

Another example game of dropping pieces and then allowing mate-in-1:

 

Avatar of Shourya_Deep

Italian

Avatar of Mihnosul

I only play scotch

Avatar of KevinOSh

Exactly what @magipi said. You could be the greatest opening expert on the planet but if you then hang a major piece in the middlegame you will never break past 800 rating. So openings is the wrong thing to be focusing on now.

Avatar of MonkSpud

when i started i played the 4 knights then went to the Italian, then ruy lopez. ha then fell in love with the london. then played the scotch alot. now im exploring the fun of the kings gambit. the point being you should try and learn many openings, not all at once.

Avatar of KevinOSh

I received the following unsolicited criticism for my previous response and will elaborate and explain a bit more:

"It has something of a negative effect on the asking of a question if one publicly reads an unwise idea into it and supports another person publicly humiliating the question-asker with examples of common beginner mistakes."

It's not my interpretation that @magipi was seeking to humiliate in any way. I think it was a well intended and honest answer to your question with the aim of helping you to improve as much as possible. That is why I agreed.

Learning more about openings is generally a good idea and something that will help you to grow as a player. But it is a frequent mistake for players at all levels to blame their choice of opening on their results.

Only at grandmaster level is it even occasionally the case that a player's choice of very well researched and understood opening related to their eventual defeat.

So switching from a French to a Caro-Kann or vice versa, or from a Ruy-Lopez to an Italian or vice versa, it is not likely to result in a higher win rate.

From me I played the Vienna Gambit as much as possible as white and this worked well enough to reach 1200 partly because enough players accept the gambit or decline it in the wrong way and partly because I stuck to that opening and gradually got better at it.

Any opening at all will work well enough if you learn and understand it. However I would not spend more than about 10% of your time working on your opening, because games are usually won and lost in the middlegame due to tactical mistakes.