Soltis (2010) Studying Chess Made Easy (256 pages) has a chapter 4 "The right way to study an opening" (pages 95-123). In general I think this is a very good book. I wish something like it had been available 30 years earlier. I am certainly going to implement one or two of his training ideas even at this late stage of my life. But I specifically borrowed it from the library because I saw a table of contents online and was curious about chapter 4.

Contents

• Foreword (5)
• Chapter 1 Chess isn't school (7)
• Chapter 2 Cultivating your chess sense (31)
• Chapter 3 The biggest study myth (71)
• Chapter 4 The right way to study an opening (95)
• Chapter 5 Two-and-a-half move chess (124)
• Chapter 6 Overcoming endgame phobia (156)
• Chapter 7 Learning to live with TMI (189)
• Chapter 8 How to learn more from a master game (220)
• Solutions (256)

Soltis radically asserts that opening memorization comes before opening understanding. (I agree, but most authors advise the opposite.) As an example he gives 

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be2 e6 7.O-O Nc6 8.Be3 Be7 9.f4 Qc7 10.Kh1 O-O 11.a4 Re8 12.Bf3 Bd7 13.Nb3 b6 14.g4



Actually, he doesn't give the moves leading up to the diagram, and the diagram in the book has the white bishop on g3. It's such a well-known theoretical position that the first time through the book I didn't even notice that! I'm not sure the move order I gave is at all "best", but it has been played. Anyway, Soltis makes the point that knowing various plans from here won't do much good if you can't remember the moves that lead to the diagram. Strictly speaking he's not correct, because you could reach an analogous position where the plans are more or less still applicable. But as a practical matter he is correct.

Quote:

This is very true. You also can't calculate the best moves in most openings, so the right amount of book knowedge is indispensable. Soltis doesn't say what, or how, or how much to memorize. My own advice is, at the start, for each opening try to memorize exactly one complete master game. It's a lot, but at least you are also spending some time on the middlegame and the endgame (if there is one). It's too much effort to always learn complete games, but certainly one complete game for each main line is reasonable.

A couple of other points Soltis makes are, learn openings one at a time, and be aware there is Too Much Information (TMI) out there. I won't reproduce his entire chapter, but on 22 pages he recommends this sequence for learning a new opening:

• Getting acquainted (he suggests a couple of methods)
• Tabiyas (normal positions), and ideal positions (more like traps)
• Main lines (after the tabiya)
• Sidelines (after the tabiya), and detours (before the tabiya)
• What to do after the opening

And then on the next six pages he covers some practical questions and answers on how to play openings better. I think he mentions openings in a couple other places in the book, but there's no index, and I don't want to re-read the whole thing to find a couple of minor points.

Aside: For some reason Soltis consistently spells tabiya as tabia. That's not how I learned it, and I can't recall having seen that spelling anywhere else.

I don't like videos, and could count the number I've watched on youtube on one hand. Before today that is. I looked at 34 youtube videos relating to this topic. I may have lost count, and I have another 60 or so links yet to be followed. In particular there's one by GM Molton from Chess Academy that might be good, but it's (1:35:04) and I'm youtubed out and need a mental health break. So here are the best two, with the unedited notes I took while watching. Although the below were the two best, there were more good ideas in some of the other videos.

(1) My Chess Notebook 2020.12.08 Building a Chess Opening Repertoire with Lichess Studies 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBMt-wdH6xE (0:17:15) 
Leonard Blackburn LBB86@lichess 
My studies owner:LBB86 
no folders , use Word doc with links to organize 
lichess | learn | study | + (new) 
book icon -.> tree (masters|lichess) 
he is recommending just the top move in masters tree 
study is autosaved (sic) 
comments, arrows, highlights (right-click) 
also recommends use books or videos 
for spaced repetition: new chapter | analysis mode = interactive lesson 
1 quiz (chapter) for each branch "Quiz 1" .. "Quiz 21" 
give a short verbal reason for every move you make , mnemonic (sic) 
balance between detail and brevity 
switch to lichess database to prepare against weaker players 
repertoire cannot be complete, just ideas 
70 subscribers 194 videos channel born 2020.09.01 
student of Ben Finegold 
--this guy is very smart , math professor 

(2) Max Warmerdam 2020.06.12 How To Build An Opening Repertoire 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXjRzwV-H4s (0:17:25) 
IM Max Warmerdam
chessbase 
example is Najdorf 
lines to look at and lines not to look at 
critical lines first 
database engine are your two friends don't follow blindly 
--good video his first for youtube 

When you watch enough videos on youtube you start to see blatant plagiarism. There was one strong player who reproduced the first half of the My Chess Studies video but did it worse, then he added some not useful stuff at the end so I guess he can sleep at night. The worst was someone who just posted another guy's video under his own name, I reported that one to youtube.

Yes, for a beginner, this kinda thing is certainly helpful.

Key:
Pieces out quickly.

ReneDescartes wrote on 02/26/21 at 03:16:17:


Way to go off on a tangent.

I just now checked my facts. My memory wasn't perfect, but since I haven't looked at this book in over 25 years, I didn't do too badly. Actually it was: 
Reuben Fine (1942) Chess The Easy Way page 67 
1.e4 g6 2.d4 Bg7 3.Nc3 d6 4.Nf3 Nd7 5.Bc4 e6 6.O-O Ne7 7.Bf4 O-O 8.Qd2 +/- (Diagram 51)

an ordinary chessplayer wrote on 02/25/21 at 19:28:44:

All right! A gladiatorial match between Fred Reinfeld and a Hippopotamus! It's very close to these games, where Black worsens his dark-square weakness in an attempt to break out, then loses to an attack on the kingside dark squares:

Re-reading cathexis's post, I want to clarify the subject under discussion is not how to learn an opening, nor is it how to choose an opening. The subject is, within the context of a chosen opening, how one goes about defining the exact responses to any play by the opponent.

Example: You are going to play the Najdorf Sicilian as black. After 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4, your choices are: 7...Qb6, 7...Be7, 7...Nbd7, 7...Qc7, 7...h6, 7...b5, 7...Nc6, 7...Bd7, and I can't think of any others. The precise question under consideration is, how do you decide which one is for you? As opposed to following some repertoire book and letting the author decide.

But it's not about the Najdorf and whether that's a good opening for you. Maybe you want to play the Scandinavian. After 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3, you have to decide between, roughly in order of age: 3...Qd8, 3...Qa5, 3...Qd6, 3...Qe5+. And you have a similar problem in a totally different position. How to solve it?

Another way of putting it. Suppose you were going to write a repertoire book, without plagiarizing. Now imagine you are going to write that book for exactly one customer - yourself. So you will tailor the book for the audience of one, and that means your method of choosing will also be tailored.

Well since I AM a Beginner, 

A few remarks FWIW:

I think a big part of Sillman's Endgame book success is due to the fact that basic Endgame knowledge can be reduced to literally three pieces out of the 32 the game starts with, 2 Kings and a Queen, etc. Whereas every opening has technically 32 pieces just from the get-go. (yes, I know 16 "pieces" and 16 pawns but you get the idea). Sillman skillfully organizes his text to the beginner's mind; for instance the fundamental endgame concept of opposition is not even formally introduced until page 42, even though 2 kings alone on a board to display opposition is one piece fewer than in the first chapter. So he is telling us what a endgame looks like before teaching theory. You, "get your feet wet" first. Your mileage may vary, but if you agree with this than this beginner strongly believes level one should be focusing on no particular opening at all, but rather reviewing what is going on in the opening, making sense of this 32-piece crowd, and why it matters. Common beginner complaints like, "What do I do if my opponent goes out-of-book?" should also be addressed.  This segues with Rene's stress on the importance of middlegame concepts, which this beginner highly seconds.

By deciding to teach in a progressive leveled approach you now have at least one fundamental decision to make: Expose learners to various openings beginning with ones that might be deemed "easier" - and that is debatable, I'm sure. Then introducing harder or more complex but different openings as you go on. Or, by choosing a select few that are introduced in their most basic form - but then *staying* with just those few all the way; each level being defined as a deeper and deeper exploration of the chosen openings. Some of you may laugh at my admitting to owning more chess books than I have read: not often seen in your ranks, I'm sure! I just finished my 1st opening book devoted to but a single opening: McDonald's "Ruy Lopez, Move by Move." Comparing that to Silecki's "1.e4" and similar I can't tell you how much more helpful the former was to me. Even if there might be much my beginner status may have missed, knowing I was going to focus on the same opening throughout really propelled me onwards. I don't know if you consider it a mere intro-book, but its broad survey of most of what White may face from Black, along with lots of helpful annotations to try and absorb made it a very important read for me.

Bottom line: I think beginner's will get the most from such an effort if you - 1. begin with an general survey of the history, usage, theory of openings with an eye to their role in adopting a (hopefully) favorable middlegame. 2. Resolve on a few famous, but useful openings that will be developed to real depth by the end of the course. 3. Include a sub-section within each chapter offering practical advice on that level's influence on the future of your middle game.

Again FWIW,

Cathexis

Quoting myself here:
Quote:

I don't see why we here at chesspub could not do this as an exercise in crowdsourcing. What are the steps for creating an opening repertoire, by level. Identify the steps, then just do the steps, level by level. The actual opening repertoire literally doesn't matter, it's the process that's important. Just pick an opening, any opening, one for white one for black. Start at step one, level one, identify, do, move on.

It might take years to complete, it may actually never be complete, but could still be enormously useful.

Step zero: list the levels.

1. Just learned the rules, playing on lichess.org.
2. Joined a club.
3. Playing rated OTB.
4. Improver, class C,B,A.
5. CM.
6. NM/FM.
7. You are on your own.

Is that a good list?

Level one, step one: ? 

Please don't say "beginners don't need a repertoire", that's a cop-out. Every chessplayer needs an opening repertoire at every stage, because every game begins in the opening. It's just the repertoire needs of a beginner are rudimentary. Every book has a chapter one.

P.S. I'm well aware there's nothing stopping someone from copy/pasting our efforts into a pdf book and selling the result on amazon. Could catch a few customers unaware. It's worth doing anyway.

P.P.S. Cue brabo telling us he already did all this on his blog, in 3,2,1...