learn openings

What are people's tried-and-true methods of learning opening systems? I know many openings at a basic level, but beyond 3 or 5 moves, I start to get confused. For example, I can easily recognize the Sicilian Defense, Ruy Lopez, Grünfeld Defense, Queen's Indian, Nimzo-Indian, etc. But when any of these start branching out, I feel overwhelmed. How have any of you tried to memorize some of these systems?

I have thought that quizzes on openings would greatly help me. But along the same lines, I can easily ace many openings quizzes, because they only go about 4 or 5 moves deep. It's beyond that point that I really struggle, but I find no quizzes that go that far.

I should add, also, that I have no desire to memorize openings ONLY, because mere memorization is not actual chess. But I do want to become considerably more secure in openings. My education of chess openings has stalled for the past few years, and I can't find a way to break through it. What has worked for some of you?

I'm probably gonna get shot down for this, but here goes anyway:

Download as many quality games of you selected opening as you can find, maybe here: http://www.pgnmentor.com/files.html

Put this database in your chess program, and play through the games one by one, spending no more than a few seconds on each position, and all the time trying to predict the next move.

After a few hours and a few hundred games, you'll have a pretty good feel about pawn structure, traps, strategy, what pieces belong where etc.

Shot down? No way, that sounds like a great idea. Thanks. I do need to spend more time going through master games.

Any more ideas? The more, the better.

Well, the purists will probably (rightfully) argue that this is based more on memory than real understanding....

I've heard nothing but praise for Fundamental Chess Openings (Sterren).

Books may be the way to go here. You can try studying books on the specific openings one by one. Because let's be honest-if you want a deep knowledge of many openings, that won't come without study.

Establishing what an "opening" is NOT + following the incremental approach also helps. This is a repaste from an earlier forum post of mine.

1. Get firmly cemented into the mindset that the opening study is MERELY a means to get to the middle game with an equal position at the very least, no matter who your opposition is (Garry or the guy down the street)

 Anything else that an opening (or an author) promises is fake advertising. You will not "crush" your opponents with it nor will it hide the rest of the defects in your chess against a stronger player. They will surgically dismantle you no matter how booked up you are.  You'll be lucky to win a few games here and there because you booked up a trap or two, but on the long run you'll lose to better chess playing from the other side of the board.

So whenever you feel you're going overboard with opening preparation,keep this in mind.

2. If you have long term goals and have a lot of time,  try learning one new move for every game you played.  That might ease the amount of information you are pumping into your brain. I've seen people claim that they can go over  4-5 opening tabiyas in 30 minutes and assimilate all the ideas, not sure how they do that or if they are rote-memorizing  ... but it is much more realistic to play the game naturally, then during the post-mortem, look up where you or your opponent deviated from the lines and "learn" the one new move that keeps you in theory. The next time you play this line, you'd be able to confidently play one more "best move" in the opening. This also allows you to "gently" adjust the thinking that picked the earlier move and nudge it towards picking the "better" move.  If you're not convinced that the book move was better, get with a stronger player and ask him.  

This "nudging your natural  move selection" process into picking better options is IMHO the cleanest (albeit slowest) ways to learn an opening system.  Though like anything else that resembles hard work, you're not going to get there without a little pain. :)

I am definitely against rote memorization for learning openings. I'm just tired of making some problematic move on my 6th or 8th move because I don't know what else to do... I feel like after playing, for example, Sicilian Defense Taimanov Variation (1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 e6) about a million times, I should eventually get through my thick skull that 5. Be2 is probably not a very good move! I particularly struggle with the Sicilian, because I mix up which lines play Bf4 and which play f2-f4, and things like that.

Another issue is that when I'm in the opening, I tend to reject out-of-hand any moves that move a piece a second time even when said piece is NOT threatened. That's not really because I'm hypnotized by the mantra "Don't move a piece twice in the opening," but more because I know I need to develop and castle quickly, or else my opponent will and I'll get nuked.

Anyway, just some thoughts. It sometimes seems that playing common-sense, straightforward moves can only carry me so far.