How Many Openings Should You Consider?

here's something i've been wondering about: how many different openings should a player use? i have read that most players generally learn and use a handful of openings, but should be familiar with all the common ones so you know what to do. 

i used to play 1.e4, 2.nf3, but i had a hard time after a while (also i didn't really have any knowledge of theory for this) and so i started reading up on some openings. since then, i've been trying my hand at the colle opening (which i have posted about on here) and i am enjoying it and have found reasonable success. 

to get to my point, when should you move on and work on other opening theories, and how much should you learn? 

Here I try everything including Na3, Nh3, h4 etc.

Otherwise, a simple repertoire would be something like Najdorf, Ruy Lopez, French, Indian, Slav, Modern imho.

Echecs06 and ShirovStyle: cool feedback. An other simple repertoire for white is Orangoutang + Grob (1.b4 and 1.g4), little theory and various traps.

I'm a low rated player, so right now I'm just trying to master the variations that come out of Queen's Pawn: Mason as white and the Sicilian Defence as black.  It sure feels like 95% of games the white opponent does e4 so Sicilian seems like a logical one to use for now.  Once I get into the 1300's I might start trying some new things out, but I agree with Shirov in that when I was playing different openings almost every time the games were so variant that it was hard to build up a decent understanding of the positions I was getting into.

1.a3 and 1.h3 and their mixture Creepy Crawly.

Every time an amateur takes up the colle, an angel loses its wings. 

OF COURSE , YOU SHOULD APPLY ONLY A SINGLE STYLE OF OPENING INSTEAD YOU SHOULD APPLY 2TO4 OPENINGS AND SHOULD CONCENTRATE ON TACTICS AND STRATEGY RATHER THAN ON OPENING, BUT GOOD OPENING IS ALWAYS NEEDED

Estragon is kidding. Though there are dudes here insisting that almost everything is refuted.

I use the modern defense against everything. It's fairly awesome and actually scores surprisingly well at all levels of play.

I'm sure that's cool, but it must get pretty boring after a while.

But then, Modern Defense players probably don't mind boring....

Against everything, U can also use Owen with b6, Bb7 and e6.

If Yusupov jumped off a bridge, would you?

hey! what's wrong with colle? i read that amateurs like it because it's easy to learn.

although now i'll have to check out the modern defence. never heard of it

Shirovstyle: Estragon meant all the suggestions about what openings to study have been refuted, not the suggested openings

Richard Reti's advice in Masters of the Chessboard is for beginners to study open games ahead of all other openings, which does not include the QID BTW.

"I only consider one opening, the best one."

you better invite me to the party! 

There's nothing wrong with the Colle or the London.

I personally wouldn't play them because I prefer sharper attacking lines, but a lot of people do play them because they don't want to spend a ton of time learning opening lines.

One person who plays the London with a lot of success is IM Cyrus Lakdawala.  He wrote a book about it and from what I hear it's a good read.

You are definitely too strong a player to play beginner openings like the Italian Game or the Scotch game. Maybe the King's Gambit for a while. You won't win many games with it, but you'll learn from it. The drawback is if you play King's Gambit, you play e4, which invite the French & Caro-Kann, or even the Pirc-Robatch, 3 annoying defenses. I would eventually recommed devolving to Bird's Opening, something an opponent can't avoid except by making you transpose to the King's Gambit, but you already learned it, right?

I enjoyed playing you. You taught me stuff in our last game, as if you were telegraphing your moves.

Regards

The Bird has 2 mainfestations that I like: 1) The Stonewall which aims for an all-out Kingside attack and 2) a Dutch Queen's Indian which is like a Queen's Indian Defense plus an f4-stinger. When the f4 pawn is exchanged usually because it guards the otherwise dangerous KN at e5, the KR and QB coordinate, intersecting on f6.