I don't think the opening is your problem. There are some seriously bad moves in that game (34 ... Ra1? -- instead of taking his Queen, you just lose your Rook). My suggestion would be to focus on basic tactics. Once you've decided on a move, but before making it, try to find his best response to your intended move. If you can just avoid blunders your strength would go up 300 points.
Really awful, defensive openings.
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Hi! I've only recently gotten into chess and have been playing a lot with one of my friends who has about the same experience as me. Initially we traded off a few games but he has since come to kick my butt somewhat consistently. I feel that my main problem is that he is mostly aggressive. I am just trying to develop my pieces while he is already trying to attack. I also manage pawns horribly while he can pin me down easily with pawns before I know what is happening. Here is one game that I feel I was closer between us. http://www.chess.com/echess/game?id=83949968. I am bad at setting up pieces to protext each other and use my pawns well. I am somewhat clueless in the opening and considering my lack of experience it's hard to really annotate or analyze it myself. If someone could give me pointers as a whole on how to improve in the beginning it'd be greatly appreciated. On a side note I have watched the Everything you need to know about chess video series and am perhaps being too heavily influenced by it with trying to develop and so on. I know this is somewhat a general question on improving but I have a specfic game I'd like looked at! If anyone had the time to at least glance over the other games that'd be just amazing. They're pretty low level with probably pretty obvious mistakes. Sorry if this is a bad place to act but I'm getting frustrated.