How to avoid Opening Blunders?

As an advanced beginner(between 800-900 in live chess - oftentimes bad asthma hoses me or I miss things on the board & lose pieces, so my results are pretty erratic), I agree.  I also try to get my rooks involved ASAP. I'd emphatically add:  don't try to get a quick mate with your queen. Many of my opponents' move their queens out right away & end up moving it more than any other piece.  And only use pawns or other pieces when forced to.  I've dubbed them "Queen People."  I've found that, unless my opponent is highly skilled or I'm not concentrating, the queen becomes a target, I oftentimes capture their queen fairly early on in the game. 

Do the more advanced people in this thread agree?

More ideas please .....

I see from your profile you only play correspondence chess.  If you don't take detailed notes and really think for a long time about each and every move and also use other resources like opening explorer or opening books to help guide you while you play then you are going to make a lot of opening blunders because you will often play moves after not seeing the game after a few days and when you come to the game cold you forget things and if you just make a move at a seconds notice you will not notice a whole lot and make blunders.  I can't really give you advice on how to combat this because I have the same problem in my games and have yet to find a solution, however, in my opinion, Correspondance, is a separate skillset than OTB chess.  Let me explain.  In Correspondance chess, you are allowed to use opening explorer, opening books, possibly even databases, and last but not least, the analysis board.  you are allowed to move the pieces to see what will happen before you make the actual move.  You cannot do these things in regular chess, therefore, Correspondence Chess, is not real chess, it's rather, a chess variant, much like bughouse or bullet chess.  Sure you can become a better chess player by playing only correspondence, however, you are gaining and using skills and resources that arn't allowed in actual chess.

Let me share a personal experience. (I'm combating those that say don't spend any time on openings as a beginner)  As a beginner, I knew virtually nothing about openings, nor did I know anything about general principles or anything else.  I basically played random moves and lost most of my games due to (you guessed it) blunders.  The point is, I learned openings that were really awful.  Openings that now I would never play.  I played those openings many times, and always lost, and could never figure out why.

The moral of the story is, to learn good openings, as a beginner, so you don't learn bad habits.  To this day I still have those bad habits, and I believe they are contributing to the many blunders that I make.  If you study an opening like you are supposed to, by trying to understand the "reasons" behind why that move was made, then you will learn opening principles, at the same time you are learning openings.  The only thing I knew about openings was this, that Bobby Fischer played e4, and that's what I played.  I can recall someone making a crack comment about how many losses I had compared to how many wins I had, back then....  From my experience, no knowledge of openings, caused me to lose way more than 50 percent of my games when playing both white or black.  It wasn't lack of endgame knowledge that kept me from winning, no, no, it was really blundering, but had I have known better openings, it would have helped.  Not that knowing openings was the cure for my "disease," but a constant drag because I keep playing game after game of me losing a pawn or two or sometimes even a minor or major piece out in the opening, not all the time, but most of the time, because I had a bad opening.

Here is an example of one of my "bad openings"

I was black there and played f6 a lot.  I just said, "Oh I played d6 last game so I'll play f6 this game and see how it goes...???"  If you think about it, there are a lot of nuiances to learn about openings.  Like for example the poisoned pawn that occasionally becomes poisoned on b2.  If you had to learn all of those Nuiances all by yourself it would take a great deal of time.  However, if you buy an opening repertoire, already built for you, then your pretty much good to go.  Let me tell you about an opening repertoire I stumbled upon, not that I am using it, nor am I implying that you should use it.  I would rather that you just casually watch the videos, and look at games geared toward a specific opening.

Here is the link to the opening I am talking about:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4uf0bnQUAc

If you're interested there are four other videos made by that same person that should be too hard to find after you watch that video.  Hope you can glean something from that video.

I'm not trying to tell you to buy a book on an opening repertoire predesigned for something you might not even like playing.  I'm just saying that option is out there.  I would rather if I where you listen to what Mkkuhner has to say on the subject, she obviously knows what she is talking about, she is a WCM.

You a few options.  Hiarcs, Squid, and Chessbase.  Chessbase is pricey, don't ask me about Hiarcs because I don't know.  Those are the database problems that I know about, I hope you can figure out t the rest with this limited information.  I'm sorry I can't be more of help on this subject.  I can only say that ChessBase is the best.  I'm starting to use it.  Chessbase may be the best, but it may be above your price range.  There is also Chess Assistant, but that is pricey as well.  you could use chess games database.  I'm not sure if you can search for a particular opening, but maybe you can.  There is always the opening explorer on chess.com as a backup plan remember that.

Lastly, I'm not saying studying openings is the answer to everyone's problems.  Moreso I am saying that if you start from a bad opening the chances are greater that you are going to lose.  Why not, spend a little bit of time learning all phases of the game, and not just middle game and endgame? 

One more thing... I wanted to ask, "Do you devote at least 30 minutes a day to tactics?"  I know I myself am guilty of not doing that every day, but unless you spend time every day thinking about chess you are always going to make sloppy mistakes on your games.  So a big part of getting better for most people is to just practice chess daily. 

I will say this though.  Curing your opening is an easy fix.  Curing your endgame or middlegame problems is not so easy...

do tactics

a lot of tactics

and more and more tactics

and have fun

yeah

and you will improve in chess

do exercises

swim

play tennis

or basketball

or ping pong

that will help you

to watch more

and focus

on the game

you can

yes you can!!!