Mtal wrote on 06/28/13 at 19:07:04:


As I understand it you're mainly looking for something that's easy to remember and handle for blitz and "chess for fun" - if so, you should look into one or more of the d4-systems: Colle, London, Torre, Trompowsky or Veresov. They're all easy to play and give good hacking chances in blitz and rapid.

Mtal Blitz simulates time trouble, but the real goal of a chess player must be to not entering in time trouble at all! 
Slow games give improvement, but in Blitz someone only uses the skils that he had learn before or that someone have. (thats why, it is easy to blame about openings when the real problem is the lack of correct thinking process that someone only learns when playing slow games or analysing positions). It is good to test openings, but Blitz have limitations and the best players only play Blitz for fun and on acasion after a long study session from time to time. It is better for someone beginner to intermediate to know exactly how many games he will play to not get excited and play all day.
Botvinnik once said: "I played a Blitz game once. It was on a train" 
Forget about Blitz for now and insted of opening books, it is much better for you and your friend to pick Tal book and start to analyse the games, You can arrange a system of points to see who scored more by guessing (the correct way) the moves and see what moves you failled and why, and correct your thinking. Read the comments, analyse variations that are not on the book, then see what computer says. For a book with 600 pages, that work must take several months of great enjoyment and then if everything was made the correct way and your percentage of correct moves is very high, only then Blitz will be a piece of cake.
Petrosian moves are dificult to find without training and analysis (deep positional and strategic player who uses prophylaxis and limitation of other players moves), it is better to start with Tal book and then Capablanca to follow pure logic. Tartakower "500 master games of chess" is another possible book for you and your friend.         

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Mtal, you need to follow Eric the red post but first you need to have a correct thinking system to be able to study lets say, M. Tal life and games book the correct way. You need to cover the moves and guess the moves of hero Tal yourself. Only when you found that your thinking was in a great percentage of moves equal to your hero, you know that you are on the right path. If you have a correct thinking system you almost do not need to memorize because there is a great diference between memorizing something without understanding or memorizing with real understanding and in the first case, you forget and in the last the diference is that you will always find the moves of theory yourself at the board even if you forgot them!
Practice tactics, analyse what is your level with a tactics program and do not try to find a combination because that will spoil your thinking and insted follow your thinking system. The games of M. Tal are even better for this tactics training because you need to find combinations at any time without a red alert like it happens with books of tactics. After that you can play 1.e4 and enter the open sicilian. You can study any opening the same way you study M. Tal book.

Actually I have. Did Sillman's endgame book. Went over a Petrosian and Pillsbury game books and doing a tatic book now. I do agree with you. I also have alot of non open study to do.Well I have not played a slow game yet but from blitz I just have not been happy with my openings and felt it was time to start working on them.

Reading between the lines of your post, you should stop "studying" the opening immediately and work on other things.  Go through a nice book of game collections, for instance, and play whatever your hero is playing.  Don't worry about opening theory yet.

I'm 100% serious.  Life and Games of Mikhail Tal, The Art of Sacrifice in Chess, Alexander Alekhine's Best Games, Understanding Chess Move by Move, Simple Chess, Winning Chess Brilliancies,  Tal-Botvinnik 1960, Morphy's Games of Chess, something like that.  Forget about studying openings.  Once you've gone through a lot of Master games in various openings you'll naturally figure out the ones you want to play.