Easiest opening to learn for beginners ..

1. develop your pieces towards the center

2. castle

3. look for tactics, checks and threats

4. voila, you're at least 1500 now

jetfighter , 

The problem is that everyone thinks that a chess game starts with the opening.That is far from true.Before the opening is understanding.

To understand the opening you have to understand it's product the middlegame and to understand middlegame you have to understand it's product also , the endgame.That is why everything starts from the endgame.

   After the endgame the important is to learn to do "safe moves".This is not exactly tactics as many think.You have to learn to do a safety check with every move you choose and be sure that doesn't hang a piece.Tactics are the 2 or 3 moves combinations(for start)that lead to loss of material(or checkmate) through a series of forced moves.It is obvious that if you can't keep the material balance , no strategy can help you.

   Once you are ready to keep the material balance, knowing where to put your pieces and how to make a plan or how to exploit or create a weakness becomes very important.

   Without all the above , knowing every opening perfectly can't help you.Botvinnik is  perhaps the best teacher ever appeared.All those self called teachers or coaches would "kill" to be his students if he was alive  and frankly, none of them would even qualify for it.

    If Botvinnik says that for beginners opening is useless we have to take that under serious consideration.

    I respect anyone that teaches for 35 years but I don't believe that he necessarily does his job right.A doctor in my village was a doctor for 45 years and he did many things wrong.If you have learned some things wrong that sometimes doesn't change with the years.It is even getting worst.Because you take a student , that student improves , sometimes fast.Yes , but he could improve faster with a correct method and no one knows if that student ultimately will hit a wall in his improvement because of the terrible gaps he left in his chess education(something that wouldn't have happened if he followed the correct method).

  Today you see players that reach 2000 , even 2200 and they still don't know what minority attack is.A, considered, great  book and best seller("Reassess your chess")written by one of the , considered, best teachers right now in USA(Sillman) devotes no chapter at all on minority attack in a 600-page book that claims that teaches people how to exploit imbalances!!!!

  We live in the era of easy solutions.The one that offers them is the one that gets the money(either from books or from "teaching").He is the THE teacher.Does any of these guys gave any exams to be a teacher?Most of them(if not all) should still be students.

      Believe me , if your middlegame and endgame knowledge is good you will have no problems with openings.Openings should only bother you as for the middle-game they produce.Try to understand that and you will easily catch up with  openings once you improve. 

I mainly focus on tactics, hardly ever spend time with openings, one reason I play the KG and Evan's Gambit, and my endgames are somewhat weak (takes me around 30 moves to mate with 2B & K vs Lone K, I can find a very quick way to mate with K & Q vs. Lone K, and i still have a hard time with R & K vs. Lone K, though I can do it with out forcing Stalemate, or going over 50 moves.)

Michael-G,

As with practically all subjects, we non-experts have to decide which experts we trust. When we choose an expert to trust, it's usually not the one who claims: Trust me, I am right and Silman is wrong. You could at least offer some reasoning   and no, stating that Botwinnik shares your opinion is not enough - it would possibly be different if you could claim the vast majority of strong players to be with you. But there are lots of GMs who view systems like the KIA (or maybe even Colle) as suitable for beginners and encourage us to study them - not by memorizing lines, but by looking at the middle games and endings that arise from them. This approach seems perfectly reasonable to me (who was it who claimed that the beginner's main goal in the opening should be to reach a playable middle game?). Now tell me why I should trust you and not these experts .

Rook and King shouldn't be hard, once you know what you're trying to do, every move is fairly natural. Take opposition, check from the side, step forward with king. Sometimes you will need to just do a waiting move with your rook to force opposition or cut off a file from his king just before delivering mate.

I don't think there's really any need to follow the 'box' idea which might be quicker in moves, but I don't think quite as easy to blitz.

Sred

You obviously understood nothing.I never said that Botvinnik shares my opinion.I said I share his , huge difference.

I offered a lot of reasoning and it's not even mine reasoning but things I have read.I don't try to convince anyone, I don't even care.Like you, most unfortunately are totally lost cases.Perhaps one or 2 out there are not and perhaps are capable to listen.They may see what I say and decide to "dig" for the truth and not accept the easy solution.The truth is not something that anyone can give you.You hear opinions and you search.But to discover you need to have "open eyes" or as Marcel Proust says "new eyes":

"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

In the meantime you keep studying openings and be sure that you are right and I am wrong.I have no problem with that , do you?

I follow a meathod somewhat to the below

Please try to stay polite.

Edit: I am actually interested in an answer. I am quite a beginner when it comes to studying chess seriously. I play the KIA, the KID and the modern, and I am actually improving. If I am on a totally wrong path, I'd like to know. But right now, I just don't see it.

Uhh, as far as I am concerned, a "beginner" can NOT play the KID, or the KIA, for a very simple reason: They are very complex strategical openings, and when a newbie uses them, positonal disaster is the most probable result of the game.

Sure, you can win using them against a 1100 rated player, but if you have a grasp of the game fundamentals, you could also easily beat a 1100 by playing 1.Na3.

Eventually an argument, thank you. I already realized that the variety of pawn structures arising from the openings of my choice can cause difficulties, especially when playing the KID. On the other hand, I found that challenging and thought that it wouldn't hurt to try to swim in deep water immediately.

I guess I'll meet some significantly stronger players in the near future in my online tournaments, so I will see.

Btw: some GMs (for example Nigel Davies) state that the KIA is quite easy to learn. Are there different schools of thinking out there amoung strong players?

 I started with chess at the age of 8. I was quite promising.

at the age of 10 I was 1200. I picked up an opening book and became obsessed with opening nonsense and was stuck at roughly the same skill level (though with a few wins through traps) for four years.
Just play the godamn game. Stop worrying about ''learning'' an opening. Why do you want to have moves on autopilot? To win? How about you win through your own creativity and effort rather than because of a book?

good point, lol, I think it helps with not loosing on time which can be a pain in the but unless you have a loaded gun, then you will never loose (+50 if its suppressed) (+200 if its a pen gun)

Helzeth,

Nobody wants to move on autopilot. Nobody mentioned anything remotely like this. It's not about learning openings in the sense of memorizing variations, but about a good way for a beginner or improving player to start the game. During the discussion, the question came up if the Colle might be such a way. I generalized this question, asking why it is considered harmful by some masters to use a system (KIA or Colle or whatever) as a way to reach a playable middle game without learning variations.

Btw: Using my own creativity is fine. Reinventing the wheel is not. You have to find a balance.

It's as if people think that if beginners arent using some sort of system they wont reach a middlegame at all.

When a student thinks on a position he uses his own intuition, preferences and abilltiies to judge what he is suppoesd to do and then plays it. Take a middlegame when he decides to trade his bishop in exchange for giving the opponent double pawns. That's an example on a CHOICE you can do in the middlegame, where a trainer could tell him if it was a good idea or not at the time, explain when it is and why. These lessons tend to stick to the player, I remember the first time my coach displayed the tactical trick of capturing on b2 with a knight on c4 when playing as black on the recieving end of the english attack. (imagine queen and rook on c7 and c8). I can now find it instantly with no problems and that was years back.

Why not apply the same thing for the opening? Why try to skip the process of growth by having the players take on a ''system'' that they KNOW is safe without really knowing why?

Whatever, if a coach wants to do that it's his choice to stunt the growth of his student.

I agree with Pfren, The problem to LEARN you need to start with simple strategical ideas and then build outward. The old saying that every problem looks like a nail when the only tool you have is a hammer applies here, and is very effective. 
I also agree, that in theory , the opening-middlegame-endgame connection but I also strongly feel that there is far too much weight given to endgames early on. The Botvinnik school ONLY accepted students after they have proven themselves tactically. I will have to ask Serper what the qualification process was when I get a chance. But It seemed to me that you had a test and a minimum rating level. The education of endgames first is pushed by players who really had mastered tactics and main middlegame plans so endgames were constantly on the table. For the vast majority of Class players the importance of complex endgames is relatively low. Games are won or lost long before they get to the endgame. Silman's book speaks directly on this subject and supports my longtime belief that endgames are not as critical for growth and study as other areas. 

openings are important to some extent that they are how you set yourself up for the rest of the game. Supporting what Pfren said the openings should be strategically simple or at least the primary plan should be. Why I liked teaching the Italian game, its equal BUT players are MONSTERS when you tell them to centralize and PUSH down the middle and wait for something to happen. It is easy to teach because the theory is well defined. the plans are relatively simple and effective. It teaches quick attacks and the importance of centralization.

Benko is also fairly simple strategically so a nice one to teach

The Tarrasch is easy to learn to learn and you 'trick' people in to learning a key position

Accelerated dragon and Taimanov (safest siclian by chess stars is my preference, I really like the format of the book) where the plan is play ...d5 as soon as you think its possible. 

Give players a hammer and let them go for it, focus on simple ideas and concepts, work on tactical themes and basic plans.  I work on endgames as they start to appear in a players games.  (see silman's endgames book) 

IMO the King's indian should wait until 1800+ and even then its rough and a probably gonna take flak for this one but the Ruy lopez too

Would you give safest sicilian to a weak player?

Whooooooosh

define weak? the format is great for players . They have what is called a quick repertiore and detailed one. THe first one gives the big picture plans and ideas the follow up chapter gives more details and specifics. you can play a good game and understand whats going on with just the first chapters alone and my advice is just read those until your 1800

Oh, it's one of my main books (I do play the taimanov after all!). It's just... Putting the hedgehog in the hands of a 1200 player is insanity. Every sub 1800 player I've been up against that used the hedgehog has fallen for the rc1 nd5 trick with a black knight on c6 and queen on c7.

Also, the line delchev recommends for his quick rep vs english attack is a poor line which commits the king to the kingside too early. The mainline is far superior.

Its all learning. exposure to positions is fine. 1200 players wont play the hedgehog correctly anyway. My goal in teaching is encouraging exposure to LOTS of positions from different angles. By the time the Marozy bind becomes  playable they can move on or learn the hedgehog