Why is memorizing openings so hard, does anyone have advice?

I've spent days trying to memorize the first ten moves of the openings on the intermediate study plan on Study Plan For Intermediate Players: The Opening! - Chess.com and have made little progress. Is it this hard for everyone? Does anyone have any advice? I mean it's just a handful of openings, how can it be this hard?

Just keep going - and look up chunking - it's how your brain can store more moves (e.g. an entire opening) and "sense" better positions as you play more.

I am no chess coach, but I think the key thing would be to try to understand the reason behind the moves instead of just trying to memorize them.

That way it might be easier to remember the opening moves, because they don't seem like just a random list of moves, but more like a series of moves that all have a purpose. And also if you happen to not remember the moves exactly, you still might remember the reasoning and play the same move or some other move that works because of that.

never realized remembering 10 moves was hard damn

"...the first ten moves of the openings..."

What I want to emphasize here is, that we are talking about multiple openings here. It is not just 10 moves all together, but the first ten moves of multiple openings that all most likely have multiple sub variations. We are talking about hundreds of moves here.

I am not trying to argue against this at all.

Also there is no point in learning or trying to learn all the different openings.

I just wanted to point out to Sea_Turtle that we are not talking about 10 moves here, but 10 moves of all the openings, which will be hard to remember.

Even if you pick say, the Ruy Lopez as white, and the Caro-Kann and Slav as black, you are still going to have a lot of different lines.

Also your opponent may play the Caro-Kann or the French, or the Sicilian, Scandinavian, Pirc or whatever else against your E4, so you are going to end up having to remember a whole lot of moves to remember the 10 first ones of every possible line, you might have to face. No matter how organized your mental toolbox and how narrow your opening repertoire, it is still going to be a LOT of moves. A whole lot more than 10.

Of course it is not necessary to learn all the different lines of all the openings, but still the problem remains that your opponent also gets to choose their moves.

So no matter how much you try to limit your opening tree (maybe we could call it that), it will still have multiple branches.

The least effort I guess, can be achieved with system based approaches like the London or Colle systems etc, but still your opponent will also get to play their openings as white. They could open E4, D4, C4, or even B3 or G3, or something crazy like F4...

But still, I agree with you on the point that keeping things as organized as possible would be helpful.

I'm happy to say I'm over half way through the pile now (yay!) and really like the ideas of chunking and seeing the opening opening moves as constellations instead of individual stars.

Thank you all for your input!

Check out Chesstempo. You can create openings lines to practice. Memorize one line, then make a variation. Once you have both variations memorized, add another variation. And another. And another.

Just, try to understand why the moves are being made, and you'll have an easier time learning than through blind memorization.

If you do not understand why moves are played, memorizing them will get you nowhere. If you understand the ideas behind an opening, you do not need to memorize moves nearly as much.

Actually it might get you into some very thoroughly researched theoretical positions your opponent knows and understands very well. I mean the opponent also knew the line you had memorized so they probably know what they are doing.

Now at this point, if you only memorized the moves without understanding the ideas, well, it is going to be one difficult game to handle.

I agree that understanding is more important than "memorizing." Books like Johan Hellsten's Mastering Opening Strategy or Paul van der Sterren's Fundamental Chess Openings might help you understand some of the common ideas in openings.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. When I said, "get you nowhere," I meant your game is not going to improve. It is only a matter of time before you either run out of moves you have memorized or your opponent deviates from a line you have memorized and you are back to being on your own. If you have no clue what the ideas were in the opening you memorized, your moves at that point will start to make no sense.

Conversely, if you understand what you are fighting for in a given opening, you are more likely to find the correct moves without having to memorize them (this does not always apply as there are some positions where forced lines require a few moves to be known, but those are special cases).

Or more general, "Pawn Structures Chess" and "Chess Structures".

I think even forced lines have a logic to them, often related to the tactics of the position. It's good to look into these tactical nuances, and try to understand them too.

I was actually just trying to be funny, sarcastic, or whatever. I have a pretty weird sense of humor, so don't feel upset.

But, yes, I agree.