Transition from Basics

Okay so I know in the opening you want to develop pieces, control the center, castle, and connect your rooks. Most people say to do all this in 10 moves if your opponents moves allow so. My questions are 1) when do you start to learn specific systems ( such as the main lines of ______ fill in the blank) 2) People say its useless for beginners as I to worry about openings and focus on tactics, but there has to be some openings and defenses that are better to learn and more successful than others. I guess I'm a little confused on what to do other than those main moves and transition my game to the middle game. A lot of the times I feel like I make mistakes in the beginning even though I try to follow those main rules and it seems like maybe I'm just not using the right openings. Any suggestions on openings being the basics would be appreciated.

Trying to study openings in detail is way to early at your stage. There is no point in spending a lot of time to come out of the opening with a small edge, when you blunder away the advantage within a few moves after leaving the book.

It is correct that you first have to focus on learning all critical tatical motives. There is a lot of free tactic training material here on chess.com.

First you have to complete your basic tactic training and you have to be sure not to blunder pawns and pieces resp. you don´t miss chances to win pawns and pieces blundered by your opponent. You should also be able to find simple mate threats in one or two moves.

You should also learn basic endings. E.g. how to mate with a queen, two rooks, one rook, two bishops. Also simple pawn endgames are important. E.g. how to promote a pawn in a K+p versus K endgame and how to keep your opponent from doing so.

Start with playing open systems 1.e4 e5 or at least semi-open if your opponent does not go for 1.. e5

Italian game or Ruy Lopez is good to start with. But don´t spend time on learning many variations.

Learning opening move sequences by heart without understandig the basic stratetic concepts behind them is useless. You will soon forget the move order and make yourself crazy.

Learning chess is quite a complex task with many different fields of knowledge you have to work on. Intense study of opening theory makes only sense at an advanced stage (e.g. > 1800 FIDE-rating).

"... In games between novice chess players, color is not the most important factor, but acquired knowledge is crucial. Without the basics of opening play it is easy to fail, and that's why openings must be learned. ..." - Journey to the Chess Kingdom by Yuri Averbakh and Mikhail Beilin

"... Maybe this warning against the study of openings especially focuses on 'merely learning moves'. But almost all opening books and DVD's give ample attention to general plans and developing schemes, typical tactics, whole games, and so on. ..." - IM Willy Hendriks (2012)

For someone seeking help with openings, I usually bring up Openings for Amateurs by Pete Tamburro (2014).

http://kenilworthian.blogspot.com/2014/05/review-of-pete-tamburros-openings-for.html

I believe that it is possible to see a fair portion of the beginning of Tamburro's book by going to the Mongoose Press site.

https://www.mongoosepress.com/excerpts/OpeningsForAmateurs%20sample.pdf

Perhaps MrCPA12 would also want to look at Discovering Chess Openings by GM John Emms (2006).

https://web.archive.org/web/20140627114655/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen91.pdf

"Each player should choose an opening that attracts him. Some players are looking for a gambit as White, others for Black gambits. Many players that are starting out (or have bad memories) want to avoid mainstream systems, others want dynamic openings, and others want calm positional pathways. It’s all about personal taste and personal need.

For example, if you feel you’re poor at tactics you can choose a quiet positional opening (trying to hide from your weakness and just play chess), or seek more dynamic openings that engender lots of tactics and sacrifices (this might lead to more losses but, over time, will improve your tactical skills and make you stronger)." - IM Jeremy Silman (January 28, 2016)

Also, perhaps look at:

https://www.chess.com/article/view/picking-the-correct-opening-repertoire

http://chess-teacher.com/best-chess-openings/

https://www.chess.com/blog/TigerLilov/build-your-opening-repertoire

https://www.chess.com/blog/CraiggoryC/how-to-build-an-opening-repertoire

https://www.chess.com/article/view/learning-an-opening-to-memorize-or-understand

https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-perfect-opening-for-the-lazy-student

 In a 2006 GM John Nunn book, in connection with opening study, it is stated that, if a "book contains illustrative games, it is worth playing these over first", and the reader was also advised, "To begin with, only study the main lines - that will cope with 90% of your games, and you can easily fill in the unusual lines later."

"... I feel that the main reasons to buy an opening book are to give a good overview of the opening, and to explain general plans and ideas. ..." - GM John Nunn (2006)

In one of his books about an opening, GM Nigel Davies wrote (2005), "The way I suggest you study this book is to play through the main games once, relatively quickly, and then start playing the variation in actual games. Playing an opening in real games is of vital importance - without this kind of live practice it is impossible to get a 'feel' for the kind of game it leads to. There is time enough later for involvement with the details, after playing your games it is good to look up the line."

You are making many blunders at the beginning, openings is not what you should be worried about, focus on tactics and maybe double check your moves to make sure every piece is "safe".

A sample of Suetin writing (from a different book) can be seen at:

http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/ebooks/SovietChessStrategyexcerpt.pdf

In a 2006 review of Discovering Chess Openings by GM John Emms, FM Carsten Hansen wrote:

"Books of this kind in relation to openings are quite rare – and good ones even rarer. For beginning players, this book will offer an opportunity to start out on the right foot and really get a feel for what is happening on the board. I am pleased to recommend this excellent book."

A few comments:

(1) People on this site are unusually and oddly against beginners learning openings. I don't understand this. I say start right away, but don't get too focused on a single opening since your taste, awareness, and strengths may change at a later date. At a minimum I'd say to keep a tree-like repertoire of your first few moves in a computer file, and each time you have trouble with one move you used, look up the book move and add that book move to your file. This is slow, but it's a compromise between learning openings and knowing nothing of openings.

(2) One opening commonly recommended for beginners is the Italian Opening, or very similar Giuoco Piano, where the bishops come out to c4 and c5. This is what my employer told us to teach our students.

(3) There exist numerous (infinite, actually) more opening heuristics than the 5-10 commonly cited. "The Chess Doctor" by Pandolfini is the best of the lists I've seen. I have my own lists that extend what Pandolfini has. There is no end to the number of opening heuristics and level of detail of those heuristics, and since no book I've found has more than about 50 at best, you either have to create your own (I think 99% of chessplayers are too lazy to document what they learn that isn't published) or sponge off of someone who has already done such work.

can you point out some blunders in the games you've looked at?

MERRY CHRISTMAS! All body