How to improve opening?

Hello there, I'm looking for ways to improve my opening since I'm really lost on track at early games, and most often confused on which move should I do since there is commonly an overwhelming amount of candidate moves available to the board

I'm not always in the mood to memorize openings, I've memorized more than 7 openings a few months ago, but unfortunately due to school works I've most likely forgot them, and the idea of memorizing moves aren't really my interest, since there are millions of variations there and concepts that needs to be learned, so do you guys have any advices, tips or anything in store for this situation? (Also if it helps I already know most of the basic principles and tactics)

i would recommend you to watch a youtuber called gothamchess, he is really good at teaching openings and whatnot and i've learned a lot from him

Spot on re gothamchess. Levy is great at teaching openings, especially his favorite for black, the Caro-conn, or the Vienna for white. Also great exposition on the King's Indian for D4.

Watch chessbrah's Building Habits series. At different rating levels, he gives you certain rules to follow. The earliest rule sets avoid teaching openings because there's way more important things to learn.

He gradually introduces a simple opening repertoire that makes sense for 1100 rating (Blitz, probably 1200 or 1300 Rapid), and then slowly increases how complicated things are as the rating increases.

The problem with learning all these complicated openings at low ratings is because we don't understand the point of the moves properly. And because we don't really understand the point, we end up forgeting the moves, lol...

That's why the proper way to learn openings is to understand the point of the moves, not just memorise them. If you learn this way then you will improve. If you learn why you play the moves and understand them then you won't forget them.

Memorising lines without understanding them is literally pointless. No-one should ever learn like this. When you understand the ideas you will learn to play good chess and punish unsound deviations.

Here is a quote from a PM (personal message) that I sent to someone yesterday, addressing exactly this topic (studying opening lines at low-to-intermediate ratings) :

Try this analogy:

Pretend that your chess memory is a closet, and that when you learn chess lines you are packing stuff away in that closet. Obviously it has to be packed in some organized manner that will enable you to retrieve it later, when you need it. So it's best if your "memory closet" has lots of shelves, and rows of hooks on the walls. That makes it easier to keep everything organized, and probably makes it possible to pack more stuff in.

The stuff that you are packing into the closet are memorized sequences of moves. Those "shelves" and "memory hooks"... the mnemonic aides that you are using to memorize, store, index and retrieve all this information...  are provided by GAMES that you remember. They can be your own games (ie: experience) or they can be Master games (ie: study).

The more games that you can remember (at least in part) then the easier it will be for you to memorize and recall the sequences of moves.

So when I study an opening, the actual move sequences are the LAST step in my study. Not the first step. The first step is to play through complete games (from the opening to "Resigns") by Masters, then try to pick a few Masters who seem to know exactly how to handle this type of position and focus my "Games" study on their battles in this opening.

For the King's Indian Defense, I picked Fischer and Bronstein. That game I mentioned above (Korchnoi vs Fischer, Herceg Novi 1970) was part of my study.

Once I'm familiar with some Master games, then I play the line several times, analyze those games (especially the losses) and  then look for more Master games in whatever specific sub-variation occurred in my own game.

THEN I start studying lines... now that I have equipped my "memory closet" with plenty of shelves and hooks to HOLD the new information in an organized manner.

Bottom line:

Playing an opening without learning it is a bad idea... but trying to learn an opening without playing it is ALSO a bad idea. Attempting to pack a lot of variations into a bare "memory closet" only results in a confused mess. Study Master games in the line, to equip the closet with some shelves. Play the line yourself (even if you lose) to equip the closet with lots of hooks on the wall. THEN start packing in the variations.

... at least, that's how it works in MY head.

I disagree completely. I'm not a big fan of Gothamchess as a teacher. He is very patronising. He essentially teaches that this method of memorising lines is the only way to learn because we are not good enough to understand.

For example, the only reason his viewers believe that they need to memorise loads of theory in the Sicilian is because he tells them that's what they need to do to play it when that's totally wrong. He teaches that it's way too complicated to understand but never teaches anyone to understand. His philosophy of teaching and learning is very wrong.

Yes! I had heard this is also a very good method. That you should associate the opening with anchor games and see how professionals are playing the opening.

Judit Polgar also mentioned in one of her Sicilian videos that she would study openings by looking at the games of other strong players to see what moves they were playing in a given position.

(Btw I can read the quote by highlighting but otherwise it's all in white and unreadable)

Do you have Dark UI on? Turn it off.

Ah yeah, that's why. I normally have it on because it's easier on my eyes.

Yo this somehow works for me, thanks for sharing this insight, the series do help a lot with my gameplay and it doesn't even require you to memorize an opening but rather require you to use your knowledge on how to play your opening that is based on your thinking instead of what you memorized, and how to refute your opponent's opening as well based on your understanding of the position

Nice That's exactly why I use it to learn. Other people used to recommend me stuff like Gotham (and I still like him) but I never learned as much from those vids as I did in this chessbrah series.