Studying Openings

Right now I'm currently in the process of studying Bird's Opening. However, I seem to be REALLY bad at studying openings. While some people find opening study fun, I find it tedious and can barely study it for more than a few minutes before I stop. Going through the games in the books is difficult for me, as all the different notes and variations make it difficult to keep up with the game and slows down the pace of studying. Does anyone have any suggestions that could make opening study more interesting or perhaps increase my tolerance for constantly resetting the board?

It ain't all zippity do dah fun and games son.

Thats why they say that you have to "work" on your opening...

Study while standing on you head.

Play correspondence a lot and use the game explorer when trying a new opening, that's how I usually study them. Know just the first five-ish moves of a major opening and then the general strategies from there. Something esoteric like Bird's Opening may be a bit harder to memorize lines for (or easier, I don't know).

Here might be some helpful advice:

If studying the book is boring, practice the  opening against your chess engine (at full strength so that it makes the best moves), and then analyze the opening based on the computer and the moves from the book.  In this way the book becomes more interactive and you are getting hands on practice with opening.  The book knowledge is important but one must practice using that knowledge for it to be effective.

I hope this helps.

 Word. Studying openings is work. I purchased books with a complete interconnected repertoire that's designed to cut down on study but is still daunting. However, I can enjoy the study when I study maybe a single variation of a variation and focus on truly mastering a single line that I'll most likely never play. Sometimes it unearths a particular mystery of chess and hopefully increases my understanding. It is disheartening that I don't get more accomplished but when I try to work through too much material too quickly, I miss many tactics, forget the material quickly, and never get a good feel for the positions. Good luck and I hope that the bird pans out.     

 Yes it can be incredibly un-fun.  Not knowing what rating you are or what experience you have with chess in general I will give you a few general suggestions.

1. If you are completely new to an opening don't go through all of the variations and subvariations.  Just the major lines, basically the stuff in bold or bolder face print.  You mention games so I assume you're looking at a book with game collections.  Just play over the games and get a feel for what's going on.

2. I imagine Bird's opening is a bit harder to learn off the bat.  You can get very different structures and middlegames arising from it.  I don't think this is a great place to start, but that's one man's opinion.

3.  Don't sweat the openings too much.  Most folks don't know but 4 - 6 moves of theory before they deviate from "book" lines. 

4.  Remember this should be fun, it's a hobby and you should enjoy doing it, when it starts to feel too much like work, step away and do something else for awhile.   

Themed tournaments.

 When you know you're about to start 10 games from either side of a specific opening...I think you naturally retain the information as you know you're about to put it into practice.

Don't just memorize all the lines in the book. Not only is that hard work, it's actually harmful to your game! You'll end up in a position where you have no clue what you're supposed to be doing, at the end of a remembered line. Your opponent will know and will be more concentrated (because he's already thinking). The results are predictable.

What you need to do is:

Play a serious game with the opening. Play your best chess. Then after the game, lookup the variation that occurred in the book; see where you deviated, compare the explanations to your own thoughts during the game.

Since you'll be learning about positions that you've recently spent time thinking hard about, it will be much easier to remember what's in the book - you have something to relate the information to.

Also, this avoids learning stuff that will never ever occur in your own games (variations 15+ moves deep).

Of course, this is for over the board play. For correspondence, just use the book during the game, no need to memorize.

If you are trying to learn an opening you must study the opening and the typical middlegames reached from this opening AND the typical endings reached from the middlegames !  Its hard work ! However, there is no other way if you want to be a trong/complete player. Every GM I have talked to about opening study has stressed this point to me.

Well the major reason I picked Bird's opening is because I feel like I give black less options than I would by playing 1.e4 or 1.d4 and I prefer the positions that I've seen so far over what I've been getting from playing 1.Nf3. So basically what I need to do is just play games in the openings and check where I deviate from the book lines? If that's the most efficient way to study openings, then I shouldn't have too much of a problem getting into it. I just wanted to be sure that memorizing openings wasn't some easy process that I just couldn't figure out. Thanks for the assistance and any more input would be appreciated.

There has been excellent advice given by previous posts on how to learn an opening. There is nothing wrong with the Bird's Openings. Many people will play 1....e5 which you need to know but other than that thematically the ideas are very much the same and there is not a lot to learn. Bottom line if you like the positions that come from it go ahead and play it. I would think there would be less to learn than against 1 e4 or d4 but have no factually evidence to support this.

Dont get hung up on openings. Sure you want to improve your game but the best way is to except that your on a learning curve, occasionally you'll get your butt kicked, eventually you'll find a style to suit your game. In the mean time pour a double brandy to make the pain of defeat go away...

I'm no bobby fischer, but openings study seems useless below Class B. Strong players at my level and the level above are tactics hounds. I have reinvented my game to show this shift. I used to study openings with all the cool names and some endgame. Now its all tactics, tactics, tactics! My game is finally improving.

I don't really spend too much time studying openings. I can't really tell based on the site ratings but I'd class myself somewhere between a class C and class B player depending on my level of concentration during the game. I'm just trying to find a way to get the most of the time I DO spend on openings, so that I don't have to make up for wasted time later when I could use that time to improve my endgame play for example.