Constuctive Critisism Welcome

I have been playing chess on and off for a limited time. I probably play at a consistant 1450 rating but my openings can be very hit and miss. More times than not I find myself trying to fight my way out, usually unsuccessfully. Ive decided to start doing a little research on openings and after reading alot of forums, my head hurts. Its very daunting. Im also practicing middle and end games at the moment but would really like to get a good opening repetoire. I would say I try for open games but dont mind a positional play. I was thinking about studying the following and would like fair or harsh critisim but please keep it sensible. Although I have a thick skin  I could do without the arrogance.

White : Scotch, Italian or Ruy

Black: Petrov, Slav, Gruenfeld and QGD

Thanks for your time. It will be much appreciated

i say u don't learn openings yet just play logically with a plan always in the mind avoid crazy tactics, just learn and avoid all traps u can fall into. just learn the basics of each

and of course play what u think looks best don't follow the book.

if u want a slow buildup go for the ruy and choose sum variations of the italian as white and QGD and Slav as black

if u want an active sharp game choose the rest

I would go with the scotch.

As Kasparov said, only the scotch and the ruy get white an advantage after 1.e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6.

http://www.chess.com/groups/view/the-scotch-fans-team

I would avoid the Petroff. It's for people who want to frustrate White more than disturb the position and go for the win with Black. I'd go for the 2-Knights Defense and learn something like the Archangel or Classical variation of the Ruy. But this is a lot of study. Maybe the French Defense.

i would recommend you study openings but the right way. there is no reason to start memorizing those tomes at our level. you can get databases or get books on the subjects. every time you play a game you check out the line that happend, what went wrong or right, ideally finding litterature that explains the openingplans and ideas also. then you only learn one line at a time. thats no stress:) if youre still not sure what you should have done in the position you can play trough some games and see after some pattern after the big boys

As long as you don't play the sharpest variations, you should be able to get away with not having to memorize too many variations.  Just make sure that you develop your peices quickly and actively, and you should be able to get a playable position 95% of the time.  I also suggest that if you want to start learning openings to look up every game you play and see where you or your opponent deviated from the plan line, and what you should have played instead.

I said that as well and u don't need to know more than the traps and basic strategies of an opening to play it:

as long as u don't go "OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH MMMMMYYYYYY GGGGGOOOOOODDDD!!!!  I KNEW THAT TRAP BUT I STILL FELL FOR IT!!!!" 

or "ok ...... what's my plan in this opening?"

in the middle of a match unless it's the first time yur facing that opening you ought to get a solid middle game with minimal (or not at all) tactical or positional flaws.

Thanks for all your comments, its much appreciated. It has certainly given me food for thought.

I think there are different processes to use, depending on your (and your typical opponent's) playing level.

My initial process of learning openings was a slow one. I would record each game I played, After the game was finished I would look up the opening in a book called Modern Chess Openings to see where I went wrong. The problem with this approach is it takes a long time to learn more than the first half dozen moves or so, but it is the right place to start.  I would see 1. e4 e6  2. d4 d5  3. Nc3 and know I was playing agianst the French but that was about all I would know. Later I would learn that 3. ... Nf6  4. Bg5 Be7  5. e5 Nfd7  6. h4 was called the Alekhine Chatard Attack, but again I had no idea what moves came next

That procedure got me up to about 1800. At that point I needed to learn openings in greater depth. I went through Chess Informants, using the ECO code to find a large number of games in whatever opening I wanted to know more about. I would copy out the first ten or twelve moves or fourteen of each game, along with the result. By focusing on the more popular moves I got a pretty good idea of what I should be playing in the early middlegame.

It took many many hours to do the work. Nowadays you can do this with a chess database in seconds. Go to an openings explorer program and have it show you the most popular move at each turn for each player.  write them down, or copy and paste them into a Word document. Stick to those moves. These mainlines are safe to play.  

When I became an Expert I decided I needed to customize my openings to find ones that suited my style. I looked through many books and magazines, examing openings, looking for offbeat but sound ideas, something to force my opponents to think on their own. I began exploring and playing many unusual sidelines. This helped me to become a master because the non-masters could not handle these positions.

After I started playing mostly masters in competititon I should have changed my focus and worked on learning mainlines in greater depth, learning the middlegame plans and even typical endgames that could come out of an opening. The tricky openings had lost their effectiveness. Because I didn't do this work, I got stuck on a rating plateau for many years.