Dunno for sure what the best openings are.
But for learning the game, I do know that 1.e4 is the best way to go for many reasons.
You may want to peruse the article written by Greg Shahade for Chess Life Online. It discusses how to build an opening repertoire and why to choose some moves over others. I'm not normally a fan of his writing, but this is an EXCELLENT article!
http://www.uschess.org/content/view/11634/658
There is not such thing as the "best opening"
While there is no such thing as the "best opening", there are far superior ones to learn first! Those would be the Ruy Lopez and Queen's Gambit. While you are under 2000, you should be learning opening concepts, not theory. The Ruy Lopez and Queen's Gambit follow the general guidelines. Other openings, like the King's Indian, for example, violate one or more principals of opening play. It does nothing to control the center, and let's White occupy it. Yes, you have the whole hypermodern startegy, and it's totally legitimate, but it's not strategy that you should be learning when you first start studying openings. The Alekhine violates moving the same piece more than once in the opening. You could argue the Ruy Lopez does that with the Bishop, but allowing White a big center with e5 and c4 isn't the same as allowing Black to bump you with an a6 push. The Scandinavian has the same issue, in that your Queen gets tossed around while White develops his minor pieces.
So my suggestion is, study GM Games, Endgames, Tactics, and Positional Play, along with "Opening Concepts". Play 1...e5 against 1.e4, 1...d5 against 1.d4, and play both the Queen's Gambit and Ruy Lopez as White. Do not try to follow 30 moves of Ruy theory, or QGD theory, or Najdorf theory if you play 1.e4 and Black replies 1...c5. Odds are, if you are facing another player with an over the board rating of 1600 (I'm about 2050), he or she doesn't know 30 moves of Najdorf theory. He probably knows maybe 8 to 10 moves tops.
An excellent source of games for the Queen's Gambit is the Alekhine/Capablanca match in 1927. Round 1 was a French. The remaining games were all Queen's Gambits!
Ruy Lopez you can find many games by any of the world champions. Capablanca, Alekhine, Fischer, Kasparov, Anand, etc.
Also, the lower rated you are, the earlier the games you should be studying. A 1400 player should be targeting Steinitz, Capablanca, and Alekhine, not Karpov, Kasparov, and Anand.
After you have done all of this, only then should you start studying opening theory, and start exploring other openings as well to see what leads to the type of middlegame that best meets your style. For me, as Black, it's the Modern Defense. However, if someone put me on the chess board as Black, and the game started with the position after 1.e4 e5, I would have no problems!
The best openings for White are 1.e4 f6 2.Be2 (or any move that doesn't block the d1-h5 diagonal) 2...g5 3.Bh5# (or 3.Qh5# if you played any other move), 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5 Ke7 3.Qxe5#, and any other variation where Black manages to get checkmated in three moves.
The best openings for Black are much more restricted. 1.f4 e5 2.g4 Qh4#, 1.f4 e6 2.g4 Qh4#, 1.f3 e5 2.g4 Qh4#, 1.f3 e6 2.g4 Qh4#, 1.g4 e5 2.f4 Qh4#, 1.g4 e6 2.f4 Qh4#, 1.g4 e5 2.f3 Qh4# and 1.g4 e6 2.f3 Qh4# are the eight best openings for Black.
When I'm white, I attempt to do the fried liver. If I fail, however, then i just follow the opening principles and move my pieces out, seeing what black is doing.
When I'm black, i prefer the Hippopotumus Defence (albiet it may look absolutely insane, I actually won a few games using it!)
Before I began studying chess, I always started my games like this. Now I know that it's not particularly smart strategy-wise to start like this as it leaves little room for pawn progression, but when I used it as a novice I always won for some reason, then again I was a novice playing novices so I really can't only chock it up to my opening xD
i suggest u try ruy lopez and french defence .so,u can get a feeling of some basic openings and understand the basic ideas behind them .then u can become better and find the <<best>> openig for u...cause there is no such thing as best opening