Usually I recommend beginners experiment with many different openings without going too deeply into any one of them.
A very good way to learn is watching hanging pawns videos on youtube. He has a whole set of playlists for the opening. There are other channels such as gothamchess.
You should mainly focus on tactics until you're at least 1000, maybe 1200. And it's generally wise not to take the opening too seriously until you're even higher rated, like 1700+. However, you should not completely neglect learning the opening either... because you don't want to reach 1700+ and lack an overview of the opening. Also, different openings have different sets of common plans and tactics that go along with them.. and so learning / playing an opening consistently will improve your tactics. As well as your general middlegame planning and positional understanding. Hence experimentation has alot of value for a beginner.
At around 1200ish I think understanding chess principles start to become important. Things like... taking up space, not breaking the tension too early, developing and castling quickly, the concept of tempo, etc.. That will carry you to 1700, at which point it's probably time to choose a serious opening repertoire.
In general listening to people talk about chess - whether that be in videos or on forums - is a very good way to learn. That's why I joined this forum... now a few months have passed, I've come to this forum daily / been working on it daily, and I've made big strides in mastering the opening.... I'm probably to the point where I need to move on to another aspect of the game.
For you probably regular video watching would be the way to do it.
Hi folks,
nice to be here.
so, I started playing a week ago and I think I did relatively fine. So far I have learned only the basics, which appears to be enough to play like up to ratings 350-400. Above 400 I feel like a need to learn some theory, speficially opening theory.
After a few videos I ask myself, how do you guys actually learn this stuff?
I mean, it is so much stuff, so many options. Do you take notes or do you take like a gazillions screenshots? Lets say I wanted to watch a 10 minute video on e4. How do you go about incorporating this into your game?