Probably dozens of ways to learn openings. You could go with video presentations, software, or books. Lots of free chess video on youtube; perhaps an embarassment of riches, and you do have to sort through some crap to find the good stuff. You could buy software like HIARCS which lets you practice any of some 200 common openings against the computer. I'm gonna go with a one volume opening encyclopedia as your best bet, although for real serious study you'll need a database as well. Try Fundamental Chess Openings by Paul van der Sterren. Good explanations of why you move your pieces where you do. Seems to be the current gold standard.
how to survive openings
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Mar 18, 2015
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#3
all i can recommend is what i have started doing and am finding great success. study one opening for when you play black pieces and one for playing white. study the variations of those two openings until it becomes 2nd nature. i know some say to study more theory than openings but when you are playing against a short clock, panic sets in.
so i play the sicilian defense when black and ruy lopez when playing white. if playing black and my opponent opens with queen pawn, i will play neo-queens indian and often transition to tarrasch defense. this is all i play and i am becoming more and more familiar with it so much so that when white blunders or plays passive, it allows me to coordinate my pieces is well executed attacks.
if I pass through opening without problems, chess is really fun game for me. Often I have impression that my opponents can easily find my mistakes, but I can't find theirs. When I study openings, there are right moves, but not most often wrong ones. If there are wrong ones, those are related with huge piece lose. Is there some resources that systematically cover openings, with all those pawn capturing, messing up pawn structure which deny development etc