how many openings should i have in my repetoire?

Currently I'm studying the Caro-Kann for black against e4; the Slav for black against d4, the Queens Gambit for white, and I have a couple of special lines against KID and London since they seem to come up a lot at my level.  Is that a good repetoire? For fun/curiosity I would like to study more, but I think its probably better to study a few in depth rather than dabble in many.  

That seems to be a fine repertoire. You may have to get some more against 1.d4 Nf6, but wait until your opponents play like that.

Someday one of you openings will have to go to your 'repair shop' - probably because you have lost some games and don't have god feelings about playing it. That is the moment to study an alternative while your feelings cool down.

Ideally I think you should have two alternatives as White and two as Black against 1.e4 and 1.d4.  More is mostly a waste of time. But if you like studying openings you could do it anyway. Chess should be fun.

You should at least have one opening against everything commonly played. However, there are ways to bypass this with transpositions. Example of how I buypass studying a lot of theory as white in the alekhine and in the modern Scandinavian. I simply play a sideline to end up in the same position! Therefore I only need to study one position and not two. This is very useful since both the alekhine and the modern Scandinavian is very rarely played.

2+ = 1+ for white and 1+ for black.

I actually studying pretty much the same openings, for me i tossed in 1c4 /nf3 If you wanna play some unrated games later let me know...

"a few in depth rather than dabble in many"

Very true

Thanks for the advice everyone!  Any suggestions what would be the logical choices to add to this repetoire next? My plan is to add the Catalan and French for white and black respectively, as they seem like logical continuations of what I am currently studying.  Not for a while though, as I feel that would be too much theory and overwhelming for the time being.  

I think your repertoire is quite thoughtful.  

Great job.

As many as you can use well without getting torn to pieces in ten moves.

I need to work on a few of mine.

What I have is written down in 2 books. For black-1 opening against e4 and 1 vs d4 that is also OK vs c4. As white I have 1 or 2 critical/forcing lines against whatever I expect to face [I play e4 so that is a lot]. My 'as black' book is about 3x thicker than my 'as white' book. So I try to go deep as black and wide as white. Other than that I play what I think leads to interesting games. If you are having fun then you have the right repetoire. [In my opinion]

"deep as black and wide as white".  I like that! thanks!

5

gross lol

I have about 10 studied and analyzed (ish) but only use maybe 6 at a time

courses i study are 1c4, Catalan, semi Slav,  caro cann, black vs the English reti and sidelines but iv been ignoring them lately and just doing tactics books. a good place for opening repitiroes is chessable, there much cheaper if your dont buy the video narration by the author, you can get a 1000 variartion course on sale for like 29 USD. it will probably take me 5 years to finish all of these books

No matter what you have in your repetoire, your opponent will play something else.

sure if they play 1 h4 i guess ill just wing it and put some pawns in the center other than that there are some lines that are nice to know....like thematic tactics within the course

That's the kind of opening that made Korchnoi say something like: If you're going to play junk like this, you may as well not bother studying openings at all...

In my opinion, you should have 3-4 openings in your repertoire.

#1 an opening as white.

#2 an opening as black against e4.

#3 an opening as black against d4.

#4(optional) an opening as black that you can play against less common white openings.

The English, reti, birds etc.

Something versatile like KID or something else that you can play against pretty much anything.

Another option is to just play c5 or e5 against the english and nf6 or d5 against the reti.

this my repertoire right now for white (i play e4)

White:

Against 1. e5 I play the Vienna game (I used to play the King's gambit but so many people sucked the life out of the position with stuff like nf6 and nh5)

Against 1. c6 I play the Advance and the Tal variation

Against Pirc and Modern I play the Austrian Attack

Against the French I play nc3

And against the Sicilian I play the English Attack

Black: I have both French and Alekhine at my disposal but definitely use the french more because I dont feel comfortable in Alekhine positions yet

For French, if Advance I play the qb6 line, and against nc3 I play Winawer

Against d4 I can't decide between the Grunfeld and the Czech Benoni/Benko Gambit