Best way to study openings

What is the best way/method/whatever to study openings?

EDIT (20-Dec-2008 2230):
More detail added, see below.

Its to stop posting stupid topics, leave the computer chair and start studying..

Ah another bitter, angry laporte post.

(note:above comment was due to a post that has now been removed)

different strokes for different folks

repitition is a good way to memorize openings but it takes ages to learn all the variations. Instead, when analyzing an opening, explain all the moves to yourself. Understand why one move is played over another - it makes dealing with variations in game easier because you understand the concepts behind the moves.

You need to start with a basic book like "Winning Chess Openings" - Seirawan and progress through to books such as "The ideas behind the Chess Openings" - Fine and then "Mastering the Chesss Openings" - Watson.

It is abit like a growing database in your head, like a tree. You learn a little bit about every opening then you gradually go slightly deeper and find openings that you want to study more.

You also must not trust what others say about the openings and come to your own conclusion and evaluation of the positions you study.

great, thanks for that.  start studying what?  a book?  a chessboard?  opening of the day?  you could offer a relevant opinion or at least be helpful

thank you crowrevell and lochness88.  your responses were appropriate and helpful.

Does no one else have an opinion on the best method of learning openings? 

It is very interesting that some people choose to memorize "book" openings while others (like me) couldn't name a random opening at a moments notice.

Personally, I've tried the book thing (I own "Chess Openings: Traps and Zaps" by Pandolfini; may not have been the best first openings book), but I don't think it is the method for me.  I never keep it up and always seem to get distracted.

I've thought recently that trying to memorize the chess.com opening of the day might be helpful, but so far, that seems to have gone the way of the opening book.

I try to analyze every move made by both players to the best of my ability, which is not great.  I'm not sure if there are some opening principles that I don't know about.  I know I should try to take control of the center and advance my pieces, but further than that I feel like I'm just grasping at straws.

So, does anyone have any further advice on furthering my knowledge of the opening?

mavis, Ward's Improve Your Opening Play and Fine's Ideas Behind the Chess Openings are both aimed at teaching you opening principles that you can apply to any random opening position. They also familiarize you with the names of many common openings and how basic principles apply to each of them. Once you know opening principles, studying variations become much simpler, because in most positions there are only a few principles moves. And you will already know how to go about punishing the unprincipled moves. :)

 I play quite a bit of blitz and occasionally OTB tourneys and what I do is I play 1.e4 and I play it for a while and all the openings i come up against i go to chess games and watch game after game after game etc etc until I am comfortable with generally playing against that opening as a whole then I selct a specifc variation that I want to play maybe do a little deeper reasearch on this borrow a book or in detail simply study a game using the opening.

As an example I played against the french and the french was beginning to annoy me because of winawers and classicals steinitz's or whatever so i went and looked at 300 games covering near all the variations besides the ridiculous ones at about 30 games per variation then from those i pick the one that i like now i play the advanced french and i study it through books so the french never go hurting me again.

It dosen't actually takes as long as it sounds if you have access to the internet and i do this to alot of openings kalshnikov sicilians are probably my latest.

I guess  the updated Ideas Behind the Openings wouldn't be a bad place to start. Always endeavor to play with *ideas*. Have an opening plan and be flexible as the game changes. As you go along you will pick up on specific openings and a few variations in each. If you are strong enough, playing over master games and spending time on figuring out what they are aiming at with their early moves will help you a lot. Keep track of your games and ask a sound player to critique your opening play. That can help quite a bit. If you set out to memorize opening lines that typically turns out to be a time waster, and if you do that in lieu of searching for the ideas behind the openings then you really have gone down the wrong path. Once you have a handle on that, blitz can be a useful way to expand your knowledge of openings you play and discover new stuff. It really does help to have a well-grounded player to give you advice.

I picked up Chess Openings for Black Explained by Lev Alburt and found it to be incredibly useful. I still find it hard to memorise variations, and worry sometimes that I devote too much time to openings, however I found that quite often it was my opening play that was poor, and the best way to fix that is just to sit down and memorise the openings.

The way I memorise them, is to spend a night looking at one set of variations (ie about one chapters worth) and go through each main variation once. Then I try to play through it without the book, then I try to up the speed at which I play through it so that it's a bit ingrained, then I move onto the next one. The next night I'll go back and try playing through all the variations from memory, and if I have problems with one I repeat my memorisation process for it, and then run through all the variations in that chapter again the next night until I can play the openings fast almost without thinking.

for me, the best way to study openings is to play them on the real board.choose one opening for you if you play black. than, use a paper and list all the 4 first moves and repet them always and always. there is not big number for the 4 first moves; use databases or chess good softwares and look why one or other move is awful and practice the refutation; but after 5 or 6 moves, practice and practice is the only way to save them in your mind.3 rules to memorize openings. 1) registre it on the paper or pgn reader. 2) play it again and again, real and blindfold. 3) go to databases and play games with this opening. with time, you memorize all the 4 legal moves. after that, don't forget, the opening is nothing if you aren't good in middlegame and middlegame is nothing if you aren't good in endgame. so, work all faces of chess, 1 h for opening; 1 h for tactics; 1 h for endgame. play a lot of games on internet; don't worry if your opponent use chess programs, he don't take lessons and stay bored in chess, but you!! you can be in a big satisfaction when you win a game with your mind.good luck, friends.

• One opening at a time
• One move at a time
• Choose an opening
• Start with the main line
• Move onto the main variations
• Play over the main line and the variations with a friend (not full games just practicing the opening)
• Play the opening in your own games
• Analyse your game (losses preferably) mentioning alternate moves you could have played and your ideas behind why. Analysing from the opposite side can help as well as you'll see your opening play from a different perspective.
• Go over the opening moves in your games with a database (or MCO, NCO) and see if there was a better move you could have played.
• See if you can find a few games in the opening you played that are less than 30 moves. Then play through them.
• Get chess software to analyse your game and see what moves it says you could have played differently.
• Take a look at the openings that come up regularly in your games and focus more on those openings to begin with.

Then there are introductory books to openings and books that explain the ideas behind openings (some are general others more specific), they help shorten the learning curve.

Chessbase has DVDs/CDs that can be great.

Finally there's getting a coach.

Hope that helps.

Thank you all for sharing your ideas with me.  I've started playing live, mostly blitz games to work on my chess.  I think that will help a lot.  I am also looking at purchasing one or more of: Ward's "Improve Your Opening Play"; Fine's "Ideas Behind the Chess Openings"; and Watson's "Mastering the Chess Openings: Vol. 1".  I really need to solidify the opening principles as well as other points of my chess play.  The best place to begin is at the beginning, right?