In fact there's no such thing as a "good" or "wrong" opening line. If that had been the case, the optimal opening line would have been invented long time ago and chess would have become an extrimely boring game. Of course each opening line has its strong and weak points, but decision which one is better depends utterly on your style and preferences.
The only real advantege of memorising various openings is that you save your time by the table, when playing you don't need to think at all, because you remember which move is best in position you see on the board. However opening analysis assumes that both white and black play their best moves, so when playing against weak oponent who does not know the theory, you may well forget all you've learned. It won't help you longer than for two or three first moves.
Privately I may write that my favourite opening is Queen's Gambit oraz Indian Defence for white, while black's response depends of course on the opening. Against 1. d4 ... I play Indian or sometimes Albin Countergambit and against 1. e4 ... - Petrov's or Sicilian Defence.
The best way to gain advantage against an oponent is of course to play an opening he does not know, which forces him to think early, while you know the line by heart. But unless you know him, you never know which openings you oponent knows well nad which he does not.
Hi guys, sorry this is a bit of a ragbag of questions but please bare with me. I have a school chess tournament coming up which will be played at a pretty mediocre standard. I am looking for an opening as white that I will be able to use both to exploit the weak players, but that I can also use against the stronger players I will encounter on chess.com , I have used a mix already, including ruy lopez / Italian game / ponziani etc, (any that could also be used to set up a trap would be good (eg legal trap) My second question is what sort pawn structures I should try to use. My knowledge of openings is ok, but I now of very few pawn structures or the openings that go well with certain structures, any tips on a few basic ones I should know would be grand. Lastly, I try to almost exclusively play the sicilian as black, in order to try and become better and better with it, but I'm not sure which variations I should use ( ie what should I use against mediocre players and what should I use against better ones, also what pawn structure(s) should I look out for and attempt to make with the sicillian? Will the sicillian work relatively well against everything ? All help would be much appreciated