Also, I am talking about live standard players
What can I expect at 1400-1500 competition
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Do you mean FIDE? Alright, players in this range have a basic positional understanding and technique and recognize many tactical patterns and common plans associated with typical centers and pawn structures. The problem is their prioritization, when they would rather fix a positional weakness that can't really be exploited rather than play what calls for their immediate attention sometimes. Heisman list as C-player weaknesses:
-They have trouble listing all their opponent's recaptures and figuring out which ones are forced.
-By looking deeper they make more visualization mistakes.
-Often miss hanging pieces at the end of long analytical lines.
Make sure to understand the situation and make appropriate candidate moves. I'd personally recommend Informant's Best 1000 Games by Chess Informant, it's a large collection of annotated master games and you can get a good idea as to the proper thought process and digest many great ideas contained within it.
ancor3 wrote:
Expect openings to be slightly better, but skills to be roughly the same. Also, it's still a game of "who will blunder first" which it probably will be untill you reach like 1900+.
Certainly have to agree with this if you're talking about live standard on here. I'm still recommending that Informant book, and their rook endgame and pawn endgame ECE's while we're at it 
I am about to break the 1400 barrier and I was wondering what should i expect. Also, which openings are best for this level of play. Thank you