My journey in learning chess openings

Quick Summary: I'm looking to study and learn different chess openings versus trying random stuff and checking game review

How: My goal is to stick to 2-3 openings over a certain time period (100 games of each maybe?. Still TBD) and measure my success by win % (I realize middle game and end game matters but I'm hoping by starting with strong openings I'll win more than I lose)

Games to be played: I'll try this at 3 min blitz as it's the game I play most often

The first batch of openings I'll try to learn are:

• White: King's Indian Attack
• Black: Alekhine's defense (dutch defense is my current favorite) 

What I ask of you: Please comment below any openings you think I should learn (especially against white opening of d4), books you recommend or online courses. I'll try to post periodic progress reports, my thoughts and let's see how this goes!

@1

"My goal is to stick to 2-3 openings"
++ You need 3, in order of decreasing importance:

1. A defense for black against 1 e4, in your case Alekhine's Defense
2. A defense for black against 1 d4, in your case Dutch Defense
3. An opening for white, in your case King's Indian Attack

"100 games of each maybe?" ++ e.g. Kasparov: black: 540 Sicilian, 158 King's Indian Defense, white: 191 Sicilian, 104 Ruy Lopez, all classical time control games...

"measure my success by win %" ++ Useless. Win % is a measure of opponent's strength

"I'm hoping by starting with strong openings I'll win more than I lose"
++ No. You do not win or lose because of the opening, but because of tactical mistakes.

"3 min blitz" ++ 'I play way too much blitz chess. It rots the brain just as surely as alcohol.' - GM Nigel Short. Play 15|10 rapid if you want to progress.

"you think I should learn" ++ None at all. Just play and analyse your lost games.

In it for the long haul?
Ruy Lopez as White, Winawer French, and Nimzo/Bogo Indian. It's the same setup as White, Black against e4, and Black against d4 and yet all three play wildly differently. Very fun, VERY rich and complex repertoire.

You made good opening choices . If you really familiarize with the Alekhine and Dutch, it will lead you to good results as your opponent's don't play against that opening much.

Study tactics and basic endgame.

Here's a quick update after 2-3 days and 79 games. A small sample size but thought I'd share my journey. At a high level I feel more comfortable in my openings although my accuracy has dropped from 82.7% in openings to 80.5%.

My initial obsevations:

Alekhine Defense: I was surprised how few opponents would play 2e5 (hopefully I wrote that right, 2nd move to e5). I had to review a few games and see what I should play when the opponent instead plays 2c3. I feel like I need to study this opening more but happy to be trying it

King's indian attack: I love the simplicity to this opening. I've realized the engine though half the time calls it the reti opening. I'll have to do some studying to figure out those lines. I also find if an opponent knows how to play against me I'm pretty lost.

Overall, a good start I think to learning new openings.!

@5

"Alekhine Defense: I was surprised how few opponents would play 2e5"
++ 2 Nc3 is a pragmatic response to avoid the theory after 2 e5. It develops a piece, so cannot be bad. Black has a choice to transpose to the Vienna 2...e5, the Scandinavian 2...d5, or the Pirc 2...d6.

"if an opponent knows how to play against me I'm pretty lost."
++ No way, you cannot be lost with white unless you make a gross mistake.

All I can say with my very poor knowledge is that you should NOT be playing 3mn blitz if you want to improve.

#7 and #8, not sure if I agree, I've gotten a LOT better playing primarily 3|0 in the last year.

@9

For progress one 15|10 rapid game is better than five 3|2 blitz games.
The main reason is that you can analyse a lost 15|10 game for say an hour to learn from your mistakes, while the 3|2 blitz games are not worth to analyse and are full of blunders from both sides.

@11

Yes, 1 e4 Nf6 2 Nc3 e5 may be the strongest, but 3 Bc4, 3 Nf3, 3 g3, 3 f4 are all fine for white.

Alright, here's another update in my journey since Feb 15th. Total games played 187 with an opening accuracy of 82.1% (was 80.1% last week and 82.7% before I started this journey).

Alekhine Defense: as I mentioned last week, this has been causing me problems. I'll be starting to study positional chess and tactics in ~2 weeks as I believe I don't take advantage of the Alekhine in the middle game portion. I definitely feel better in the opening now that I've played it a few times. I've played the Alekhine 30 times and only won 12 times (40%).

King's Indian Attack: Played 40 times and won 47.5% of the time (7.5% draw and 45% lost). When this opening turned into the Reti (40 games played) I won 52.5% of the time and tied 5% (lost 42.5%)

I was going to try to switch my opening strategy for black this week but I feel like I need to improve with the Alekhine as I read this should play well against lower competition like what I play. That being said, I really do think this is coming down to the middle game (weakness of mine) so will need to brush up on that.

Any suggestions on a new opening to study for white?

Thanks for reading!

That being said, you get 10x as much raw experience from 10 3|2 games than from playing and then longform analyzing one 15|10 game. For an experienced chess player, yes, absolutely play 30|0+ and analyze every game, that's the fastest way to improve. For a beginner, simply playing as much chess as possible is the fastest way to learn, and so playing 3|0 and doing surface-level analysis at most gets the most amount of openings, middlegames, and endgames. After about 6 months to a year of that, I'd say that's the point when switching to 15|10 and picking a more narrow opening repertoire is going to be more beneficial.

@14

"For an experienced chess player, yes, absolutely play 30|0"
++ No, it is the other way around. A beginner has neither the time to think nor the intuition to play 3|0 and should play 15|10. An experienced player can play blitz or even bullet for fun.

"playing 3|0 and doing surface-level analysis at most gets the most amount of openings, middlegames, and endgames." ++ No, it gets the most amount of stupid blunders.

I thought I'd provide another update on my journey so far. I have bought a few books to study and improve my overall game. I'll probably start trying to play longer games once I get through a couple of them. I'm currently reading Play Winning Chess by Yasser Seirawan.

Openings: I switched about a week ago from the Alekhine defense to the Scandanavian defense. I'm finding that much easier to play so far.

In the past two weeks I've played 312 blitz games. A slight decline in my opening accuracy from 82.1% in the last update to 81.8% now. A summary of my openings:

White: King's Indian attack played 68 times with a 54.4% win rate and the Reti played 63 times at a 52.4% win rate

Black:

Scandinavian defense: 77 games played with a 50.6% win rate

Dutch Defense: 29 games played with 51.7% win rate *side note* The last few games where I've played the dutch my opponents have taken a different line than most. It's something I'll have to study as it caught me off guard

Alekhine Defense: 16 games at 31.3% win rate

I know there's a debate about the length of games I should be playing. Yes, I'm making many mistakes in 3|0 but I'm also finding that it's helping me understand the opening part of chess much better. That's my current goal is to focus on improving my opening moves. As I study more and focus on the middle game then the longer games will absolutely be where I'll play the most.

indeed. Way to go. I would caution you to stick to more practical openings but otherwise, seems you have a plan in mind. Another thing is to start to have an Opening Repertoire in mind in the midst and gradually focus on fine-tuning those instead of "experimenting". In the long run it will serve you well, building a foundation as you improve in other areas of your game. I was lucky in that I was able to pattern my play & repertoire around such players like Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, Rubinstein, Capablanca, Seirawan and especially Alekhine. Studying their games etc.

I've got a question on the Kings Indian Attack that perhaps I should post a new thread on but hoping to get some answers here. I've realized that when I play the Kings Indian Attack my rook on F1 is trapped and never really enters the game. Should I play that along the 1 file to find it an open space? Should I keep it there as defender to the King?

Really

Here a KIA player (White).

For this reason I play the KID and Pirc with Black.