How Does One Improve at Developing in Their Opening of Choice?

I have chosen a few openings for White and a few for Black, but no matter what opening I choose, I ALWAYS end up making bad moves repeatedly in the opening phase. I try to develop, try to protect my pieces, but I'm always told by Stockfish that my moves are bad. I don't know how to go about improving at developing in the opening.

May I please have some advice?

The typical advice for ~700 rated rapid players is that they should wait until ~1800 to take the opening too seriously (like study in depth 10-12). For now, learn the first 5-6 moves and focus on tactics.

If you're really motivated by studying openings - i.e. you just enjoy it and you won't play chess otherwise - well in that case... you generally get some piece of software suck as chessbase, rybka chess aquarium, lichess studies... etc. where you can record a move tree of your opening repertoire. Then you open up a database, look at how frequently the various moves / countermoves are played, decide on responses to the common lines, and incorporate that into your tree. You build up the tree like 8-10 moves deep, and by the end of it... you'll know the lines pretty well. In conjunction you can watch some youtube videos on your lines just to get the ideas. And if you're really serious... find a chessable course on it.

till 1800 ? XD dont listen to this guy.

you are at a level where you shoudnt trust stockfish too much yet. engines detect things that are way over your head. You should use the engine to check for fairly understandable blunders

easiest way is to get a beginner friendly opening book that explains everything. Cheaper is to use a combination of database and engine but at your level its bound to confuse more than elucidate.

If you are still having trouble, pick , really easy openings. like London for white, caro kahn for, black , an easy queens gambit declined variation etc. then you can expand your repertoire when you get better. At your level, the goal of the opening is to get playable positions whose basic ideas you understand.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/how-do-i-decide-which-openings-to-learn

While posts 6 and 7 can be a useful read, READ POST 5 of the link above.

The first mistake you are making is picking and choosing openings.

Read post 5 thoroughly (yes, it is long) and it will show you that picking and choosing openings is the biggest mistake you can ever make.

You will see this with the comparison of 30 years with me as Black vs e4 compared to 30 years with me as Black vs d4 or as White.

The latter was a result of "pre-selection" while the former is not. You will see in that post how I have hopped around like a chicken with its head cut off defending d4 and playing White by force-feeding the Queen's Gambit at the start when I was not at a rating to be studying openings (1100ish), while Black vs e4 came naturally, and like many successful GMs who stuck mostly to one or two openings in their younger years and another in their older years, that is what happened with me.

Botvinnik - Youth - French, Over 50 - Caro-Kann

Korchnoi - Youth - 1...e5/1...c5 - Over 50 - French

Bhatt - Youth - French, Last few years before retirement - 1...e5/2...Nc6

Kasparov - Childhood - Najdorf, Adulthood - Scheveningen via Najdorf move order

Me - Adult Years - French, Entering my Senior years - Petroff

Whereas force-feeding the Queen's Gambit at 1100 has lead to scrambling for openings and no consistency. Just look at how long my current "trend" has been. Nothing like defending e4:

Black vs d4 - Stonewall and Classical Dutch since 2022

White - Trompowsky/Levitsky Attack - A couple of months!

So as you can see, still flailing at age 49 looking for the right opening. Too late in life and too many games played to figure out what comes "naturally" at this point for me. But the success with defending 1.e4 shows in my game. There are even a couple of local players that are predominantly 1.e4 players that tend to play 1.d4 or 1.Nf3 specifically against me and only me because of number of times we faced and they have seen first hand my differences in strength between defending e4 and defending other 1st moves. That post I reference basically spills the beans as to why that is the case!

And in fact, this past weekend was no different with Black. I had 4 games with black in a 6 round event. Now the results don't reflect what actually happened.

Rounds 2 and 4 were my only wins - they were the 2 games I had White.

Rounds 1 and 5 I faced 1.e4, and both games I blundered really late in the game. Both games the position was about -6, both games I had the winning move as my other main candidate move at the critical points, and sheer chess blindness got me, losing the 1st and allowing perpetual check in the 5th.

Rounds 3 and 6 I faced 1.d4, got legitimately crush round 3 and groveling for the weak side of a draw barely got me the half point for round 6.

So even though the "result" was a half point out of 2 in both cases, the games themselves were vastly different, with Black winning and late plundering in the games with e4 while having issues defending d4.

Just more proof that validates the post I reference above. Take it seriously. Trust me on this one. I speak based on 30 years experience and base it on an actual true life scenario, not hypotheticals.

For new players I would say just watch a few YouTube videos and pick a few openings you like, and just learn the openings traps: how to apply them and how to defend them. And what to do after the opponent knows the trap. This way you are often playing forcing moves and you will understand what is going on in the position.

-Play gambits and study tactics. It will make you a better chess player rather than playing systems where you don’t know what’s going on blindly making moves. Also learn general opening principles and introduce yourself to positional chess concepts… so you can understand why the moves in the opening are played.

-Once you get a repertoire you like , analyze each game, see where you went wrong and correct that next time. continue to study each opening here and there with YouTube videos or courses.

but all in all at your level you need to just learn how to not blunder , which will come with better muscle memory and chess knowledge. Play a lot and analyze so you don’t make the same mistakes.

i think the worst thing you can do is something like a chessable course or opening book… you’re not going to know what’s going on after you make muscle memory opening moves, and most of those courses are made by titles players who think way different from you. They might say a position is better because you have a chance at promoting a pawn in 15 moves but for you the 800 you aren’t thinking about the game that way and it will make no sense.