I was told to forget about studying openings, HELP!

I have been playing for nine months and my rating is between 1100-1150. I read in many publications that players rated as low as I am should not worry about openings. Practice solving tactics instead. Tactics! Tactics! Chess is 90% Tactics. So I listened and did just that. However, now I am having misgivings about taking that advice. There are times I get lucky at the start of a game and I am able to play my opponent on a level playing field. But too many times I messed up so badly by the seventh move I know I'm going to lose pretty badly. The only openings I know is the Kings Pawn if I play the White pieces. When I play Black I try to mirror my opponents moves at the beginning of the game. I need to start learning the opening game but I have no clue how to start. There are too many openings and each opening has it's own variation. What is the best plan to begin learning and understand the opening game taking baby steps so I don't get so confused I wind up getting migraine headaches? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

It's true that you need some opening knowledge to get through the start of the game without getting slaughtered. But you don't need GM level preparation. The most common opening for white is the Ruy Lopez or Spanish opening, and a favorite for black is the Sicilian. You should know the rudiments of both of those openings from both sides of the board.

Two great places to go are chessopenings.com for wonderful video lectures on the openings and the strategies behind them, and chessgames.com for thousands of games which you can sort by opening.

Watch the videos several times each to get some of the patterns imprinted in your brain, and then go over to chessgames.com and play over the moves of a large number of master games, thinking carefully about every move and about why you think it was played.

Beyond that, only practice will help. Play a bunch of games here on chess.com with the opening(s) you're learning, and analyze your games--especially your losses--afterwards.

Above all, though, don't try to play a whole bunch of different opening at the beginning. Whether you  play the Spanish, or the queen's gambit, or the king's gambit or anything else, stick with it for several months and really learn it before you try anything else.

Good luck.

Don't worry about thinking at the opening. At your level (and mine) you really should not care about the opening, unless you choose very specific openings. 1. e4 and 1. d4 can be lead without so much memorization.
About tatics: it's really important. Actually I'm winning many games against 1500+ players (I'm 1400) because I exercise tatics. You will improve a lot after doing tatics.
With black pieces the most intuitive lines (the basic is 1 defence against e4 and another against d4) for me is 1. e4 e5 (leading to ruy lopez or italian game) and 1. d4 d5 (where white usually uses queen's gambit), although I'm actually using queen's indian defence (against d4) and Gunderam's defence (against e4).
But generally speaking, you can try to play by yourself and learn with your blunders, or you can watch to videos about opening principles and openings you like to use. Also analyzing databases can help you to see the most used moves in many variants.

Buy some chess books on openings, I have a caro-kann one.

Yes, opening isn't that important. It's much more important to be able to solve problems without preparation. Magnus Carlsen isn't an expert in opening but his chess understanding is so high that he can win in almost any position. Work hard, solve puzzles. This site has great tactics trainer.

But when there's no flashy tactics on the board and you have a few pieces left what will you do then? good players study the endgame first because everything in chess is closely connected to it.

Take some minutes to read this http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/improvement-in-chess-according-to-elo

GM Andy Soltis suggests that amateurs are better off choosing openings that are not currently popular at the grandmaster level.  The reason is that the popular openings are the ones that your opponents are most likely to know.  White's only getting equal positions after long forced variations mean nothing at the amateur level.

I think most people have already pointed out the main things. If you are losing by move 7 then you are most likely not following opening principles. My guess, without looking at your games, is you are trying to attack without having most (if not all) of your pieces deployed and are losing material to basic tactics or just getting pushed around the board due to that.

As you said, there are a lot of opening lines and variations and a lot of those are very playable at pretty much any level. You can easily get lost in opening study but if you then drop a piece (or pieces) in the middlegame, what good has that done you? That's why tactics get pushed so hard.

So, focus on opening principles. If you don't know all of them, do a search and you'll find plenty of resources. While you can deviate from them in many situations, you should probably ask yourself when you do if there is a good reason to do so.

While doing that, choose three basic openings. What do you plan on doing as white and what do you plan on doing against d4 and angainst e4 when playing black. In most games, especially in OTB and live, you will be out of book in the first 4-6 moves. You really don't need to study any lines any deeper than that and in most cases (at your level), following principles will get you that far anyway.

You can play over master level games in your chosen openings to try and get a feel for them. Go over your finished games and see where you or your opponent deviated from the majority of master games. Try to understand the most popular moves, but unless the deviation was a complete blunder, the moves played in the game are probably fine, especially at lower levels.

Another option is to play some correspondence games. You can use opening databases/books and use that to try and learn some lines and get some familiarity with playing games from decent opening positions.

Notice you haven't tried the free Chess Mentor courses.  Good basic introduction to opening principles and even some theory on common openings.  Highly recommended.  If you must study more theory, youtube has a chess.com channel where they lay out the basics of 30 or 40 openings.  Doubt that you really need that much theory yet though.  Try to understand the principles taught in the CM courses (you can review them as many times as you need) and apply them to your games.  You'll get better.

http://www.chess.com/blog/webmaster/free-chess-mentor-courses

I still think tactics trainer is good. Maybe its penalties are too much but it's a life. In a real game time is very important. And it doesn't forbid to take time and learn. But if someone wants just to learn without time pressure then i can recommend site lichess.org. I enjoy tactics trainer although i'm a slow thinker and it's difficult for me to break my current rating.

Also as it was mentioned before it's very important to analyse our games especially if we were slaughtered.

Of course he knows but he is not an expert. He usually has an equal position after opening or even a little bit worse one.

Chess has 3 phases : Opening , Middlegame , and Ending .  If you lose in the opening it wont matter how good you are in the other 2 phases so anyone who says you don't need to study openings can safely be ignored . Every game of chess has an opening phase but the same claim cannot be made for the other 2 phases .... Examine your lost games ... did you lose any of them in the opening phase ?  If many , or most , of your losses were due to poor opening play then you need to study your openings ... its that simple .

The world champion is not an expert on openings? 

The nerve. Who are you to make such a statement? 

Oh...you got a 1300 rating here, excuse me, you must know all about chess at world class play. Tell me have you a source for such a claim? Like maybe from someone who knows what they are talking about? 

You don't need any opening preparation at your level. Your opening plan should be to make as few pawn moves as necessary in order to get your pieces into the game safely. Work on keeping your pieces out of each others' way. Whenever possible, use tactics to gain time in getting your pieces out. If you can make your opponent respond to a threat while simultaneously getting one of your pieces into play you have gained an advantage. Someone mentioned castling early. You need to get your king to safety or your opponent will be able to use threats against your king to gain time. Castling also brings one of your rooks to the center of the board. Beginners like the queen because she is so powerful but in most cases, bringing your queen into the game early will allow your opponent to gain time by threatening your queen with less valuable pieces. Of course, for every rule there is an exception, so I will just say, it's usually wrong to develop your queen early in the opening. One more thing. It's usually best to try and bring your knights closer to the center of the board where they have more squares to move. This is true for all pieces but especially knights.

Always keep an eye out for tactics that can win material or even mate - for both you AND your opponent. Even good amatures can suffer from blindness to what their opponents are up to. With every move your opponent makes, ask yourself the following question, "What is he up to?"

I'm the guy who has higher rating then you, huh. Do you want to know my source? Sometimes i watch chess matches and people have such opinion. Maybe it's wrong but it's what i have now. He is so strong that he doesn't need extensive opening preparation. I don't know if you remember but Anand used to be the same he won many tournaments but was outplayed by Kasparov in opening. But Magnus is stronger then Anand was in his peak.

openings pretty much don't matter at anything sub-GM level if you just remember about developing pieces to good squares.

if you screw up its most likely because your tactics are not good enough.

You are going to get a million different opinions on this, and its going to be up to you to decide what works best for you.  Anyway here is my .02 cents :-)

At your level, dont worry about openings.  What i mean by that is this.  Dont waste time trying to memorize lines of theory.  When youre still dropping pieces, missing basic tactics, and mates, its not going to do you any good to know a line 10-20 moves deep.  Remember....EVERYONE at your level thinks they are a tactical monster, because tactics are important, but always leave room for improvement.  I would learn some of the basic opening traps like the fried liver, etc.  Not so much because they will help you win, but because it will help you learn to not fal lfor cheap tricks. 

  Instead learn and understand the Opening Principles:

Control the center - e4-d4-e5-d5

Develop your minor pieces toward the center - the center is the most active part of the board.  Count how many squares your Knight controls on f3-c3 compared to h3-a3

Castle - King safety!

Connect your rooks - Simply means move your queen

Study tactics, basic mates - KQ vs. K, KRR vs. K, KR vs. K

Most important - Have Fun!

It seems a good policy regarding openings is to know a few openings relatively deeply, but no more. At this level, which subsumes my level, most mistakes are tactically based or based on superficial planning, so it would be a good idea to study these things. It also helps to study the endgame a great deal.