How to study openings efficiently.

@tpr

You said : The best you can get out of any opening is an advantage of a pawn.
It can be much more : A knight, a queen... a mate.

Here's an exemple :

4... Nf6?? was payed 521 times in Lichess database.

And an other :

7... Kg8?? was played 943 times in Lichess database.

I memorized these moves... and a lot of others. I will play them if my opponents offer me the opportunity.

@billy_ombima

Exactly, really good! I'll just repeat:

"By playing and analysing thousands of Blitz game. Am not Good at short time controls. But I play thousands of blitz just to get a grip of openings. And do some experimental moves.

Of coz watching videos and reading books, lots of books go hand in hand with this.

You will only master opening by practicing on real games."

You can approach this from another point. You have 100 hours time to study. Will you get the best benefit from using your time for:

a) openings
b) middlegames
c) endings ?

It depends from your personal strength and knowledge profile. For most players under 2000 FIDE Elo c) endings will bring the best return of time investment.

Surely there are players who should learn opening principles first in their situation or learn a special repertoire. And the answer to the question should change over time, as you learn.

@Thengel #21
You gave two good examples of what you mean.
This is about opening traps, not openings.
Most beginners play the opening too fast.
In the first example black should think and find 4...Qe7! which is actually playable. Black will be a pawn down but with compensation. 3...d6 is better, but leads to massive theory. If black plays the Russian Petrov defence, then he should walk into this trap only once.
The second example 7...Kg8? is plain stupid. Just a bit of thought reveals that 7...Ke6' is the only move. 5...Na5, 5...Nd4, 5...b5, 5...Nb4, 5...Bg4 are all better moves than the natural 5...Nxd5.
You do not need to memorise all that. That is "all ballast", as Nimzovich put it. Or to quote Lasker: "variations are transient, method is eternal".
If you need to memorize in order not to fall into opening traps, then how will you succeed in avoiding mistakes later in the game? Just general principles and playing slowly are enough to avoid mishappenings and end up in a position you understand as you built it yourself.
Memorising opening traps to take advantage of these yourself is even worse. It helps to get free wins against weak players, that you should beat anyway and it is useless against better players.
Memorising is no substitute for thought.

@tpr

+1

Learning to think is far superior to learning to memorize here. But again it depends on the level and the opening you choose. There are lines to remember if you reach a level of 2100+ FIDE. Before opening principles and positional and strategic ideas are sufficient.

To your question of learning opening efficiently:
Pick up a single opening of your choice
Study the pawn structures that arise of them. In the sense, understand what to do in that specific pawn structure, where your pieces belong. When to change the pawn structure etc.
Then start playing a few games to see if you can apply the knowledge efficiently
Then you come back and learn a line to see if your opponents are trying to just play around with move orders and the like
So on and so forth....

BUT...at your rating, keep working on tactics until you are absolutely sure that you can calculate a decent 3-5 moves ahead at least.

How will you play a decent middlegame out of a bad opening? How do you know where the pieces belong typically? You will need hundreds of training games in every opening to know where to put your wooden friends accordingly.

Best training: play complete games and look for improvements next time in opening, middlegame and endgame. Your brain will compose matters.

I find that havin some pre-made plan helps to keep things dash more organized. Also what I found that keeping things simple helps. As when I got into chess I started to play kings indian, a bad choice. One has to make loads of far more critcal choices in that compared to d4-d5 games. So study full games and dont pick opening because Kasparov played it or something. Pick openings where you understand most of the decissions once you see them .

And amongst weak players: opponen will deviate soon anyway. No way to prepare all responses anyway

I do it this way:
Get a book made out of paper ( quality chess is usually my choice:)
What do I want to archieve ( plans ? )
What is the best setup and the value of the pieces? What do I want to trade or not etc
How will it affect the plans when one side doesnt put the pieces on the right squares? How to use it? - the lines which are not often played for a reason ( the "bad" plans )
Tactical motifs
Pawnstructure
Patterns
..and some other things I forgot for sure.

I always look at full games and think deeply about moves I do not understand. If they are too difficult I work it out with the engine. With this concept I learn everything about chess. The endgames are also often very similar in the lines, so it is definatly useful not to stop after move 20 for example. Some problems out of a opening a player might feel even in the endgame. It will take a shitload of time but I think it is a good way to improve in every aspect of the game. I really enjoy the way of "science".
And of course play, play, play.

1. First, one needs to understand what they want from an opening. If you are at my level (1600 there abouts) then its just a position you are comfortable playing. one where you understand the plans, objective, tactical possibilites etc.
2. With that objective in hand get a book with the opening of interest and get the first 10 moves specifically paying attention to piece development and pawn structures. Put the book away for now.
3.Go on line, play as many games with said opening just to get a feel of the opening. by this point you should have a general idea how the opening works its ups for you and it downs
4. Go youtube the opening get a good indepth lecture on it. watch the video to the end without making notes or referring to a board. Next, watch the video again this time taking notes highlighting critical positions being discussed.
5. Now select a few gm games, like 5 in the opening, old games before 1970 are best. play them out annotating at points where something interesting jumps.
6. Select another 5 gm games, and play "Guess the move" taking the side of your opening interest.
7. Play 10 10min games and annotate them. by this point at club level you will be better than most but not the club expert
8. Now you can go and read the rest of the book.