Your favorite Opening and how you chose it?

I'm a relative beginner and just starting to explore the Opening phase. So far, I've been using Fritz 12 to try and choose an Opening - or a selection of Openings - to focus on. 

I am aware of different named Openings (e.g. Barcza Opening; Queen's Gambit Declined; etc.), but just looking at them - either on Wikipedia, or ChessGames.com, etc. - didn't give me much of an inkling as why one Opening would be better than another. 

I've done some analysis with Fritz 12, but was interested to see what "human" chess players did.

So, what's come to be your favorite Openings (either as White, Black, or both) and how did you come to focus on them?

I think the best way is to do some research on the different types and pick one that suits your playing style.  I've read that generally, 1. e4 leads to open, tactical games, while 1. d4 leads to more closed, positional games.  Of course, nothing is set in stone and there are no hard and fast rules, but using this as a guide caused me to switch to opening games as white with e4 (when I first started, I used d4 just because).  This will guide games into positions with which you are more comfortable.  

For black, I'd say pick one response to e4 and one to d4, again, suiting your style.  

It will take time to discover your style, and therefore which opening you like.  I've been playing for about two years and I'm still figuring it out.

It can be frustrating learning an opening only to have your opponent take you out of it early on, but hey, he has his own playing style too.

Like others have noted, you're much better off not shoehorning yourself into given opening based on what Fritz says.  Indeed, Fritz is probably going to tell you to respond to e4 as black with the Sicilian (c5), which is one of the trickiest and nastiest introductions to opening chess theory I can think of. 

Some like to ease into things with a really broad and narrow understanding of chess openings.  Working through a book is probably the nicest way to go on this route, but if you're a hardocre computer learner and have a Windows PC from the last couple years, one thing I tried with some success is to bust out the old Microsoft Chess Titans (don't laugh) and play this on around level 5 (because it gives you more variation in response than higher levels) simultaneously with Fritz running on infinite analysis.  Check your moves against Fritz's best response - once you've made a move Fritz doesn't like, explore Fritz' continuation to see what sort of problems develop from that choice.  Ideally, you end up learning a theme about the given opening - an idea about what the opponent's strategy really is and what needs to be done in response - and this gives you a heuristic that will make the opening much more intuitive to you later on.  Do this two or three times a day and you find your opening knowledge expanding in a way you can actually retain.  [You can of course do this with just Fritz alone, but you'll need to mess around with the variance settings so that it shows you enough different openings, and you'll need to constantly switch infinite analysis on and off).

Alternatively, you could learn one or two deeper openings very throroughly, which seems inefficient, but is actually helpful in teaching you tactics and strategy, since truly knowing the opening will necessarily teach you traps and principles.  The Ruy is the classic first choice here; I would personally avoid the Sicilian as a first choice, as the best moves tend to become less intuitively graspable starting at around move six. 

Finally, you can try to build a complete repertoire based on low-theory-intensive moves.  I'm not sure what all the appropriate choices might be here, though that would make an interesting forum question.   

Good luck!  I'm still hitting my head against opening theory myself.

This has popped up some interesting and varied responses! 

I've got some of Yasser Seirawan's "Winning Chess" books - well, I say some (all, except "Endings" and "Brilliancies").

I've been making my own notes based findings in both Winning Chess Openings and Winning Chess Strategies ... Seirawan seems to give the following as a rough set of principles/guidelines for the Opening phase:

1. Activate Your Troops
2. Build a House for Your King
3. Castle Your King
4. Connect Your Rooks
5. Control the Center
6. Obey the Rules of Strategy

These guidelines are what I've been looking at when analysing the Openings with Fritz (scottk74, I take your point about the Middlegame phase).

I put Fritz on Level 50 (optimum setting), then click the button to force Fritz to make all the moves. Interestingly, for the most part, Fritz does seem to follow the first four principles (I haven't yet analysed the Control of the Center - though I'll be working on that bit soon-ish; also it's difficult to say how well Fritz is doing on the Strategy side, as - from what I've read from Seirawan's book - Strategies are many and varied).  

By the way, dajacca, Bobby Fischer apparently said the King's Gambit was bust ... but you're finding it alright?

In my idle time I sometimes let the engines loose in the position after 1 e4. In my experience, they usually recommend one of:

1 .. e5 (Open games)
1 .. e6 (French defence)
1 .. Nc6!? (Nimzowitsch)

Of course, this does not say much :) Anyway .. e5 is what they usually recommend as the first opening one adopts, and it's easy to see why. The ideas are usually easy to understand and straightforward. You are fighting for central space and development. In some other openings, especially for Black, the ideas are more counterintuitive, and you need to be very precise in adopting them. Counterintuitive means that you are apparently breaking some fundamental opening rule. If you apply these counterintuitive moves in a wrong order, you're doomed to lose because they will merely be breaking the fundamental opening rules and have no redeeming features. For example in the Sicilian Black tends to make a lot of cryptic pawn moves in the first stage . In the Modern you often delay castling for seemingly indefinite periods of time.. In the Alekhine you possibly make 4 moves with the same knight in your first 5 moves if White so wishes. Not easy to digest if you ask me.

If you follow Seirawan's advice you'll be ok. Dont get too caught up in the opening study, your aim is to the enter the middle game (pieces developed and rooks connected) on at least an even par with your opponent. Use your time to study general middlegame principals and strategies involving things like isolated pawns, outposts, how to use open files and so on. Play through mastergames constantly so you get a feel for what a real game looks like......and do puzzles to keep the brain working.

I once read (from a GM, cant recall who) that amateurs spends far too much time on the opening in an attempt to mimic the moves and games of masters.....once in the middle game and out of theory they are often lost......just a thought?

Bobby only attempted to bust the King's Gambit after he lost a game as black against Spassky (His d6 move is not a bust).  Oh and when Fritz is running without a powerbook or opening encylopedia it will play the openings relatively bad.  I would reccommend like everyone else has said, to study openings pick up something from the Starting Out series.  Thats if you want to learn openings, personally my favoriate openings are the Sicilian Dragon as black and the Ruy Lopez as White.

The powerbook / opening encyclopedia ... Are they separate from Fritz 12, or are they accessed via the Fritz 12 disc?

1.E4 :)

I've been doing more analysis of different Openings and I'm kind of edging towards what ruffsteve says about not getting too caught up in the opening study.

I've stuck to Yasser Seirawan's principles: 

1. Activate Your Troops
2. Build a House for Your King
3. Castle Your King
4. Connect Your Rooks
5. Control the Center
6. Obey the Rules of Strategy

... and looked at the four most-common Opening moves that Fritz plays (I'd already started doing that before this post; so I'm getting that done, before studying GM games).

In 100 different starts, Fritz went for:

1. c4  (18%)
1. d4  (24%)
1. e4. (42%)
1. Nf3 (16%)

i highly recommend going to www.thechesswebsite.com and viewing the tutorial videos in the chess openings section.  they are excellent and very helpful.  i have come to almost exclusively playing e4, and going into the italian game or kings gambit if black responds e5.  e4 leads to more open games, and more chances to play aggressively (my preference).  if you play e4, It is good to study up on the sicilian defense and french defense as well.  even if you dont like to PLAY these as black, youre going to see your opponents use it quite often, so its good to know some responses and ideas as white.

I think it is a good idea to know some d4 openings/responses as well, since you are likely to see it from your opponent.  Its always good to have something in your back pocket when possible, because you never know exactly what your opponent is going to throw at you.  I would start by learning the queens gambit as white, and looking into the slav, and semi slav defenses as black.

In general, specific openings aside, i couldnt agree more with the post above...following those opening principles will help your chess game no matter what.  I chose to supplement my studying of basic opening theory with some specific openings, and everything has helped me improve alot in a short amount of time

i mosty go with e4

I use to play 1. e4, but after so many years I decided to switch to 1. d4. I noticed a quick change in my playing. For one, I was winning more games which is always a plus and I found that I really like this opening. I'm not a strong player by any means and still have a long way to go, but I am really enjoying playing Queen Pawn. Most people I have played against seem to not respond to it as well as King Pawn openings, at least among the amateurs.

Contrary to advice and the recommended principals weve spoken about....have you considered adopting an opening system such as the Hippo or the Lion (variations on the Modern defence and the Philidor). Both allow you to play a series of moves to open your game without having to look too hard at what your opponent is doing. Both can be played as either black or white, and will get you into the middlegame without an serious problems. I play both systems with some success

Check out the Hippo group on chess.com

http://www.chess.com/groups/home/hippo

also...

http://www.chesscafe.com/kaissiber/kaissiber54.htm

and for the Lion...

http://www.vanrekom.nl/thelion/indexgb.htm

Good luck!

Thanks ruffsteve, I've bookmarked those two pages. Have added them to my analysis "to do" list. 

queen's gambit but maybe i'll switch to c20 king's pawn game: wayward queen, I always get my 2 middle pawns up 2 squares and 2 knights for black

To be honest, that is a slightly complicated question for me. I'm fond of unorthodox openings, that I play somewhat against my better judgement.

My favorite orthodox openings are the Caro-Kann, Grünfeld, and Dutch. On the other hand, my favorite "out of the book" (or perhaps this world) openings are the Bird, Bongcloud, and Nimzo-Larsen.

I like the spanish opening (Ruy lopez) because fischer played it and because i win a majority of my matches with it.I highly recommend it ruy lopez:e2-e4 e7-e5 Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 Bf1-b5 a7-a6 Bb5-a4