best openings for beginners

Ruy Lopez

Scotch Game

Sicilian Defense

These are probably the easiest to learn first.

If you want to study some opening line, choose a healthy mainline opening. By a healthy opening I mean one, where you play for the center, develop pieces and castle early. It is more important to understand why a certain move is played than to try to memorize lines. The choice of an opening is a matter of taste. But in addition to looking some opening line (or even instead of) you should understand so called opening principles. The first ones are: control the center, develop your pieces, bring your king to safety (=castle). Other good principles are: don't push the pawns on the side you castle (except after development it is good to create an escape square for the king, the other exception is if you fianchetto your bishop), don't bring your queen out early, don't move a piece twice unless there is a good reason for that (or you have finished development), try to maintain a healthy pawn structure (no isolated pawns, no doubled pawns). You will face a lot of different opening lines and these principles help you make good moves against any opening, learning individual lines won't help, when your opponent plays something else.

I do not recommend gambits (Queen's gambit is the exception here, it is a healthy opening and the gambit is often declined) as the idea is to get piece activity or some other kind of positional compensation for the sacrificed pawn, otherwise it becomes a blundered pawn. For beginners the idea of positional compensation is usually not clear. Overall playing gambit lines is again a matter of taste, I hardly ever play them myself (though 3. ... Nf6 in the Italian can be considered as a gambit) but I don't like playing against them either.

I started by learning the Ruy Lopez and it has served me well. I would also add the Italian Game as a good opening for a beginner to become acquainted with. Personally, I wouldn't recommend the Scandinavian to a beginner because it violates the general opening principle about not bringing your queen out early.