Honest question

What is your goal with the opening? I mean, I know the basics. Quick development with pieces well defended, castle early etc. I only ask because I seem to really struggle with my openings. It seems like it's always 50-50 and I'm either very confident or very flustered with the opening. People have suggested to me to learn two or three openings for white and two or three openings for black and to master those as much as I can. I'm just wondering what some of you may have done to give yourself the best chance in the opening.

Okay BigFoxy, let's break it down:

To understand what our goal is in openings, we need to know what our goal is in chess?

To win in chess, you need to checkmate the enemy king. That is our ultimate goal. So all actions we take on the chessboard should be to mate the King eventually. Different strategies: Like attacking the King, winning extra material, promoting the pawn to a Queen, exchanging the right pieces - all of them lead us to this ultimate goal directly or indirectly.

So now the question we should ask is: How do we play the opening so that we give ourselves the best chance to checkmate the enemy king eventually?

This is where opening principles come into the picture: You give yourself the best chance to checkmate the opponent when you develop pieces to the right squares, secure your king and control the center. All the fundamentally sound openings follow these principles. 

Now any time you're getting confused as to what to play remember the fundamental question: How do we play the opening so that we give ourselves the best chance to checkmate the enemy king eventually? It should point you in the right direction.

Coming to specific openings, every opening has a different strategy. In some, the plan will be to go for a direct attack. In others, the plan would be to gain a material advantage, promote to a Queen and then checkmate in the endgame.

If you're looking to learn openings, there are 2 free courses on openings you can go watch: 

One covers openings after 1.e4 for White: https://chessmood.com/course/whitemood-openings

And this one covers openings how to play as Black against 1.e4 or 1.d4: https://chessmood.com/course/blackmood-openings

I hope this helps.
 

If you follow opening principles well you should arrive with a playable middle game almost every game. I don’t think you need to master any specific openings in great detail, but learning (as example) one opening as white like the Queens Gambit and routinely playing that will ultimately make you more familiar with that opening and therefore more confident. You could also learn several openings as black and do similar, for example you could play e5 against e4 and d5 against d4 and learn openings for those over time. But again, most games you can arrive at a playable middle game just understanding opening principles and asking yourself what your opponent is trying to achieve and what is best for you in that position. I’ve yet to sit down and master specific openings, and I'm not saying don’t ever study openings because of it, only showing that you can move your chess game forward considerably without much opening study and that a chess game isn’t relied heavily on openings as long as you are playing reasonable opening principles. It’s when you don’t that you’ll often fall into traps and trouble early in the game. 

-Jordan