Originally posted by chessisvanitywell to start out maybe only one opening, but when you're studying I would play through games with different openings, because it will give you more ideas.
anyone think it is better to cover(study) all the openings and play many of them .....or just focus on one for white and 2 defenses for black?
It depends at what level you are playing at. Most people focus on openings when they should be studying tactics and endings. Then when they lose they are like "This opening sucks" and they just keep blame it on their openings when it is their play that is lacking. Just by looking over game you will know enough about other openings. I would only study the three as you mentioned in depth. But tactics and endings are much more important. 😛
In a fit of optimism, I did the "Let's try lots of openings" thing when I first subbed here and it got me into lots of trouble. It's just too much, too fast and now I'm just trying to hang on and survive my mistake.
I would say the KID and Sicilian as black should give you a pretty flexible set of responses to most stuff white will throw at you. One for e4 and the other for d4.
Originally posted by chessisvanityNigel Short once said that Black can play 1...c6 and 2...d5 against anything by white. I play almost all of my games with Black like this (but I play d5 before c6 when facing 1.d4). Of course, I'm not Nigel Short...
i wish there was a system black could play regardless of what white opens with...
Finally someone saying something intelligent!
All you need to know is the KID and Sicilian as black, and 1. d4 as white.
There are a lot of systems to beat with 1. d4 so it's harder to play as white.
But learning all the different is dumb because you wn't even be playing them
i'm not very good, so do something else, but here is what i think anyway: play everything, but try to understand what you are doing. i mean, don't just "learn openings" but learn why you are making the moves. my reasons (again, i stink): you can study the openings that others make any time you want to, there's lots of online sources and books for that, so "doing the homework" is easy, but it isn't easy to understand why certain moves are good and others are bad. once you can figure that out, then you will get really good. i'm still trying to.