What is the best opening? (in your opinion)

Ruy Lopez, most played at top level and for good reason so.

The King's Gambit!

I think a great opening for beginners is to start with e4. This can lead to a very popular Italian game or Ruy Lopez. You can practice all the opening principles with this.

Here's a the famous Opera House game that started with e4.

It depends entirely on what you like.

I like unbalanced positions where both sides have advantages and disadvantages, and both sides need to combine defense and attack.

So I play Sicilian Najdorf and King's Indian Defense as Black, and I like King's Indian Attack and the Botvinnik System as White.

The caro khann is pretty cool and I also like the london system and the nimzo indian defence.

King's Indian Defense

If the question is what openings most people play than find thing called “explorer”.

Depends on what metric you use.

For example, the London is likely one of the easiest to learn, but is almost universally hated for that reason- very little divergences from the basic moves, very few variations.

Alternatively, the Sicilian has over a dozen variations and is therefore one of the most adaptable openings, but all this theory (in the sense of opening theory) can also be a disadvantage to someone who isn't too keen on remembering potential dozens of moves and mainlines and opening traps and such.

What's more the "ideal classical opening (see diagram) technically gives the best development for the middlegame, it is totally impractical to reach (the center pawns cannot themselves protected by pawns and become targets).

White reaches the ideal classical development in the above diagram. (Black's development is not any specific example of an opening.)

In conclusion, the "best" opening is largely subjective- you should play what gets the kind of middlegame position you like to play. If you like open positions loaded with tactical precision, perhaps go for something like the Ruy Lopez, with bishop development within Black's territory encouraging tactical play. If you like strategic, closed positions, play an opening which encourages them.

Basically any d4 opening but the modern and hypermodern openings like Dutch, Trompowsky, Torre.

For specifics, the London, Queen's Gambit, and the Indian Defenses

That is if you are more of a positional player like me

1. d4 avoids the heavy theory sicilian if you are white.

When facing 1. e4 as black, what I would recommend are positional openings too with less theory, like French and Caro-Kann. 1...e6 and not 1...e5 to avoid theory and the constant thought of what opening to face, and 1...c6 and not 1...c5 because of ugghhh too much theory

Basically any positional opening, in the condition that you are the one who chose that opening.

I avoid the Sicilian, because not only Black gets to choose 1...c5 but Black also gets to choose what variation, if Najdorf, Dragon, or 5...d6

Italian game

Ponziani's Opening.

The King's Indian Attack.

Queen's Bongcloud

For real