Any tips for memorizing openings?


Understand the ideas, remembering why i make a move or a pawn push is easier to remember when i know why im doing it. Try chessable, read the text or watch the videos explaining the ideas and reasons.


Yes. First of all, don't memorize. It's an unproductive waste of time. Unless you're having fun spending hours memorizing a dozen different variants all the way to move 15 and rarely applying anything past move 5 in your games. In which case by all means go for it. If not, step two below.
Second: Learn the opening principles. After you do that, pick an opening and watch a 5-10 min video on youtube on the basics of said opening. Don't worry about memorizing anything. Start playing that opening with what you remember. Play several games. Meanwhile, keep working on your tactics and doing puzzles. Every time your opponent plays a move that gets you out of theory because you haven't memorized it yet, calculate and play a move based on previously mentioned opening principles. Then keep playing that opening and analyzing your games. Repeat. Over and over again. After a few weeks of doing that once you're familiar with the opening and positions that you get form playing it, go back to the video you watched and watch it again. Better yet, watch a more in-depth video on that opening and pay attention and try to understand the ideas and themes, don't focus on move order or memorizing exactly every variant. Instead, pay attention to optimal squares for your pieces, which squares they usually go, strategies on how to treat the position, common tactical motifs that arise from those kinds of positions/pawn structures, etc...
Depending on how frequently you're playing, in a couple of months you'll have a relatively decent knowledge of the openings of your choice.

You just need to keep practicing it over and over - lichess as a guest - go back and review after, repeat... in the process of this you get a decent grasp of the themes and issues, and then you'll find you've memorised the main moves.



Not sure what playing level you are at the moment, but when I was grinding for the National Championships, I would find a problem opening and turn on Stockfish and an Openings Livebook. I would compare the moves that each program spits out and find out a reasoning. I have found that I was able to memorize most opening lines this way (I have a horrible memory, so mess-ups did happen).
A good tip to keep in mind is that if your opponents deviates from the opening variations that you know, chances are it gives them a worse position as opposed to playing a tried-and-tested one.

You don't have to go to another site to practice openings.
Chess.com has a full Opening Practice section, for all major openings and defenses.
Puzzles -> Practice -> Openings
https://www.chess.com/practice/openings
You can play as either color, takeback moves, and adjust your difficulty level, as well.

It's fine to memorize moves without understanding them... but when you do this there's a certain upkeep cost. In other words you'll have to review them every so often to keep them in your memory.
If you understand the reason behind each move, then you can remember them for a very long time with no upkeep cost.

Its a paradox.
People will say "try and understand instead of memorizing"
and they're right to say that but its not that simple.
Chess isn't 'solved'. Openings aren't 'solved'.
So 'understanding' of openings is scalar.
Unlike in many of the basic endgames.
Where it can often be digital A or B. (where B is ... you don't)
Possible improvement:
Have reasons - your reasons - for playing the moves you do.
That means your mind is using the information instead of just eating it.
Which means memorization will come along on its own.
Is that good that it does? Again - that's a paradox too.
Chess has a lot of of that. Paradox.

1,000 lessons & 3600 puzzles pb:
my average rating over 10 categories of play is currently 1731 & i've never focused on openings;
sound positional principles make a good framework for narrowing down candidate moves, but in my opinion the bulk of one's efforts at the board should always come down to accurately calculating lines into concrete variations & then choosing wisely between them to find the best continuations.

Understanding why is maybe just memorizing deeper variants
Understanding why is two things:
1) Understanding the move in the context of whatever strategic, tactical, endgame, etc themes are present in the position.
2) Understanding the move in terms of the alternate moves, both the reasonable alternatives and errors.
GMs don't only know the main line, they know many things about the moves that aren't typically played too.