What opening should I use? (326 Rating)
Basically any of the mainline openings is OK, but I recommend sticking to the most principled ones.
Italian game and/or Queen’s Gambit for white and e5 against e4 and d5 against d4 as black and go with opening principles from there.
At some point you’ll find out which openings lead to positions you feel comfortable playing. Those are the ones you should keep playing and later study.
Openings don't matter. At all. If you feel lost in the opening, search for "chess opening principles". That is more than enough.
There is only one thing that really matters: don't play random moves in 2-3 seconds. Take your time and think. Try to play good moves.
Take a look at this game:
Your 3. fxe5 (?) loses immediately, but that does not matter much in this game, as we shall see.
4. Ke2 allows mate-in-1 with Qxe4, but black is not interested.
There is still mate-in-2 on the board. Instead of that, black blundered the queen with the inexplicable 5. - Qe3+ (???). You spent a whopping 3 seconds to play 6. Kc4, which loses instead of winning.
I repeat: take your time and think. Try to play good moves.
This is not a good opening. You may win a few games against fellow beginners but it is not a hard trap to avoid and any player who does will end up in a better position than you.
What's more, even if you win playing this kind of trap, you're not learning anything, so you will not improve and your rating will end up with an effective cap, because you can only beat players who aren't good enough to fall for the trap.
Many people are saying to play the Wayward Queen, and I did that at one point, but I think if you do choose that, it will come back to bite you. I used it for a while, and my chess games were just me trying to Scholar's Mate, not getting it, and flailing around until getting checkmate. I recommend just putting out two center pawns, the knights, and then the bishops, and adjusting your play slightly based on the response. Don't waste time learning the Spanish or anything - get the basics down so your opening is reliable enough, study tactics, and then learn more detailed openings.
@MaxLiu05, you also say it as a Wayward queen attack, i actually recommended it until you reach 400+
Also around 700+, a dude did it on me but lose to a fork of his king and rook, idk why the engine says to sacrifice the queen, but i ended up with freaking 99.8 accuracy, i just relax and embarrassed my opponent.
Here's an opening that's great at very low rating: 1. b4.
You can then bring your bishop out to b2, and with your pawn on b4, there are lots of ways black can easily screw up if he is braindead. Your bishop will see all the way across the board (and sometimes he will move his kingside bishop, and you can snipe the pawn by his rook. If the knight is still there, his rook is stuck and you can take it for free) and your pawn is ready to attack his Knight if he moves it forwards.
Usually, 1. b4 e5 2. Bb2 and if he playes Nc6, you play 3. b5 attacking it. He will move the knight forwards, to b4 or d4. If b4, you play c4, and your pawns cover every square his knight can run to, and you can just attack it with your a-pawn and you will win it on the next move. If he goes the other way to his center, attack it with your king's pawn. His knight will have to move, allowing you to take his King's pawn, and many opponents will move the knight to take your pawn on b5. This is a mistake, because they don't see that your pawn push opened the king's bishop, to cover your pawn, and you win his knight. This happens often even at 1100 elo.
b4 (the Polish opening, the Sokolsky and the Orangutan, pick whichever name you like best, it has 3 for some reason) is an unorthodox opening, which is officially "playably bad". Practically however, it works, you suprise people, and you get lots of practice seeing long range moves with the bishop. I think it works great for beginners.
If your opponent does not make any of the errors, or similar, that I explained, that is okay. You can play normal moves, I suggest that c4, maybe b5, and e6 are useful in many positions (e6 opens the king's bishop to defend c4). There is a slight weakness of the c3 square often, because the b-pawn can't defend it, just try not to get pinned there and it's fine.
E4, Nf6, D3, Nd2, G3, Bg2 (beware of Ng4 attacks) so H3 etc - QE7 then go attack on the Queen-side
But obviously play to your opponents replies, but that can and will get you good positions against players rated under 800
1.
You shouldn't be concerned about specific openings at 300. You should learn opening *principles* (not the same as openings).
https://www.chess.com/lessons/opening-principles
2.
After that, you should realise that people at this rating aren't winning/losing games because of openings. The single biggest reason games are won and lost below 1000 is because players keep hanging pieces in 1 move. If you eliminate these 1 move blunders from your game, you will see your rating fly up hundreds of points.