How to get better at playing black?

Since white has the advantage of opening, what is the general consensus on what to study to become stronger at playing black? 

Keep your defences concise and consistent to accumulate experience and familiarity with the plans.

I took a quick look at a couple of your games, in one where there was a loss straight from the opening, you violated opening principles, took out you queen early, exposed it and then let your Queen hang.

In another one where you got the worst of it you also didn't play according to opening principles.

So it's probably best to focus on development principles and start making blunder checks as part of your routine thinking process instead of studying an opening.

This is a good read on opening principles.

Something that lower players tend to not understand as Black.  You cannot go into the game going after the White King.  You must defend yourself and simply try to equalize.  This means the following factors are the most important for Black:

1) First and foremost, a safe king!

2) Focus on getting your pieces developed and trying to gain space.  If you cannot gain space, try to trade a few pieces off to get the rest of your army some breathing room.  Do not make bad trades though.  Do not trade your good bishop for White's bad one.  Do not trade Bishop for Knight in an open position.  Do not trade knight for bishop in a closed position.  Only trade Queen's if yours is more passive than White's.

3) Only after your king is safe and you are fully developed can you even remotely begin to think about attacking the White King.

Alot of good feedback in this thread.I'm going to assume that "getting good with black" means being more successful as black,more wins/draws and fewer losses.I would advise 1.e4 e5  and 1.d4 d5 as your two openings for black ,play everything else "by opening principle".Get a note book and build your own opening book based on using chess.com to analyze your games.When you go awry in the opening you record what you should have played. Open games,1.e4 e5 results  in an open board where simple tactics are at a premium.Every comment by previos posters has merit,learn chess principles...they are chess "laws" for a very good reason.Do  simple tactics ad nasuem...1 move (capture the loose piece/fork-double attack/give mate) and " I go-You go-I win something" ( 3 ply) problems. At your level thats what drives improvement,and is the basis for all "higher" tactics Learn the fundamentals of simple endgames,tactics are useless if they result in a won endgame that you lose for lack of endgame knowledge.This approach works,have seen it w/many players.Good luck.

Edited moderator stumpyblitzer 

I wouldn't even suggest this because not all brains think alike.

I would start with defending 1.e4.  Think about it.  What does White want to do?  Play d4.  If White can get in both moves uninterrupted, he owns f5, e5, d5, and c5.  Not what you want.  So you MUST disrupt either e4 or d4 quickly.  You also do not want to throw your pieces out there early.  1.e4 Nf6 allows the pawns to harass your knight.  1.e4 d5 allows them to take and your queen is out too early.

That leaves you 4 options where you can contest e4 or d4 with pawns.

Contest d4:  1...e5 or 1...c5 does this.

Contest e4:  1...e6 or 1...c6 immediately followed by 2...d5 does this.

I would, if I were you, experiment with all 4 ope ings as Black.  Do not consult any books or databases or videos.  Play a minimum of 20 games with each.  Pay attention to your feel of the positions and which one of those 4 leans most to positions where in the middle game, it "makes sense" to you.  Almost like a baby determining whether to be left or right handed.

Once you figure out which of the 4 makes the most sense, study the theory of that opening in depth with chess books and a board, and note I said books, plural, not a book.

Defending d4 is different because unlike 1.e4, 1 d4 is protected, so it makes no sense to attack irmt, unlike e4.  So your choices are narrowed.  You need to prevent e4.  Only 1...d5, 1...Nf6, or 1...f5 does that, and the idea is prevent or slow down e4.

Start with the 1.e4 exercise.  This should take you about 3 months to figure out which of the 4 openings, 1...e5, Sicilian, French, or Caro-Kann is for you.

This is how I actually became a French player.  I did this back in 1995, and 1...e6 and 2...d5 made the most sense, and I asked if it had a name, found out it was the French Defense, and the rest is history!

I have the opposite problem because I usually do better with black... but I spend most of my time working on black openings and middlegames whereas with white I'm more freestyle, so that's probably why.

But I like the advice TF gave... as black (well, as white too, but especially as black) you have to satisfy some conditions before attacking, and those are (more or less) king safety, piece activity, and control over 1 or more central squares.

Here's an example where you following principles for the first 15 moves and were rewarded with a winning position.

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Here you had the option to win a pawn by capturing on d5 or to win a pawn by capturing on d3. You chose d3 and things went badly and you lost the game, but this is ok. It's ok to misjudge a middlegame. You do a little calculation, try your best, make a mistake, and you learn for next time (after Bxd3 Qd2 the pin on the b4 knight was difficult). Your position was better, so keep playing like this and you'll win more than you lose. Losing a well played game is fine.

But it's NOT ok to lose a game with mistakes like this (below)

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You eventually lose this game, but more importantly, these moves are just nonsense. You can't learn as much from games like this, and repeating them leads to more losses than wins.

Now... if you want to be creative and mess around with 1...g5, that's fine. I mess around too sometimes. But opening like this while wanting to do better with black doesn't make sense : )