Your chess opening repertoire journey

I am still very new to the game, but I decided to go against gothamchess's advice and have been playing the ruy lopez exclusively (if my opponent's cooperate with 2. ... e5 and 3... nc6, and as black I also play e5 and nc6, but I'm not so sure what to play against d4 when I have black yet.

I plan to eventually diversify and experiment with my openings, but right now I am still improving a lot and enjoying myself.

How has your opening repertoire evolved or changed over time and with your improvement and gaining experience? What openings did you start learning first and did you change your mind later or have you stuck with those?

My first was the simple London, served me very well. Good luck in your journey.

I have always flitted between different openings too readily and not really stayed with any of them to properly learn them. And been too ready to play eccentric or unorthodox sideline openings before I really knew how to play the classics. So I played the Grob for a while when I should've picked e4 or d4 and learned that properly. And I got obsessed with names/reputations of openings so things like the Sicilian dragon - not because I understood why you'd play that Sicilian over any other Sicilian variation (or Sicilian instead of E5, Caro or french ) but because it had a cool name and was fashionable at the time! I think I'm a little more settled and sensible now - I play 1.c4 as white but am trying to learn and gradually introduce 1.d4 as well, as ultimately I think I should've done that years ago. And as black ive chosen the French to e4 which I'm fairly happy with and QGD to D4 but I'm also considering queens Indian and nimzo indians. I'm not great at any of these openings yet but I am confident they're all solid and reliable and should serve me well if I can stick with them and not go back to obscure crap like the grob

I didn't actually say it but for others who are new to the game I would add my wisdom that most of the time obscure/unorthodox openings are obscure for a reason - they're not very good! They give you a worse position than you could get from most regular openings and yes while you might suprise your opponents with them, they'll probably still be able to give themselves a perfectly fine position even if they're mildly surprised at the same time.

I started off with the Vienna Gambit, which I think is excellent for beginners, and with Black I would play into the Italian and Spanish, as well as a QGD. Nowadays I play the Spanish with White and the Najdorf Sicilian and King's Indian Defense with Black, though I have been toying (mostly unsuccessfully) with the Grunfeld, I didn't give it near as much study as the Najdorf lol.