Pairing Scotch + ?? for white and Pirc + ?? for black

Hello chess community! 

I'm a beginner player of about 2 weeks (~850 rated) aspiring for 1200-1500 OTB in a year or so.
Most of my training is spent on puzzles from books, as well as some puzzle rush and things like that, and I am prioritizing those things over openings. However, I am spending some time on openings and have found a lot of value there. 

I am learning the Scotch game for white and the Pirc/KID/Modern for black. I have really enjoyed the radical difference between the approaches and think that the contrast is helping me learn. At some point in the next month or two I'd like to incorporate a second opening for black and eventually a second opening for white. 

I'd like your opinion on what openings would pair well with the Scotch for white. By pairing well, either something that has a very contrasting playstyle to give me more exposure *or* something that covers a system or defense that the Scotch doesn't handle well. Likewise, if you have an opinion on a similar pairing for the Pirc/KID/Modern for black, I would appreciate it! 

Again - I'm looking either to fill in weaknesses of the existing openings, or something that has a contrasting playstyle to help me get a fuller experience and see different theory in action. 

Thanks! 

I am working on my ability to deal with positions I encounter by reviewing past games, practicing puzzles, etc. That should naturally improve my ability to deal with a broad range of positions.

I imagine it will be a long time and several hundred (or even a thousand ELO) before "openings" are even a thing during games. So this is more for fun - the high contrast between theories makes it easier for me to spot differences and I enjoy learning about the differences.

So something that is high-contrast with the Scotch game (I.e., if permitted, playing 1. e4 ... 2. Nf3 ... 3. d4) would be fun for me to learn about - and comparing difference with the Scotch might have some secondary benefits to my broader understanding of the game.

I think, for example, it has helped me better understand chess as a whole being able to compare how the Pirc responds to a long castle to how and when the Scotch long castles on the attack. As a better player, you might have the experience to offer some high-contrast suggestions for same-color openings.

Thanks!

I appreciate the wisdom! But I think I what I am looking for are examples of contrasting theory or systems that, because they are so distinct, can help me understand broader chess principles/strategy. The detailed lines, while I am spending a small percentage of training on them, is more to better understand the larger strategy/theory.

So less about memorizing the detailed lines of Ruy Lopez v. Italian to play them, and more about understanding broader strategy differences and goals of each by studying the lines. Because I am a beginner, the higher the contrast the easier it is for me to see and understand the differences. I enjoy learning those differences.

E.g., conceding the center for several turns in the hypermodern Pric/KID/Modern before counterattacking versus the Scotch which is often fighting in the center on turn 3. Or an opening that naturally favors long castling versus short castling. Those sorts of contrasts.

I appreciate all the input, but I must not be making my goals clear. I'm not looking for openings to break me through 1,000. I expect that will happen naturally as I get better on pattern recognition (we agree, I think, on how to get gud at this stage).

I'm looking for thoughts on what openings would be high contrast to the Scotch for white and for the Pirc/Modern/KID for black. Because I have enjoyed learning and seeing how different each plays.

E.g., I imagine, but I don't know (which is why i'm asking for suggestions) that a gambit opening would play radically differently from the traditional Scotch. But the Scotch Gambit is probably not as contrasting to the Scotch game as the Staunton gambit. Or a e5 opening instead of the Pirc for black.

I don't intend or expect to play lots of book lines in these games for many months, because neither I nor my opponents will know the book lines. But I have enjoyed the contrast between the book lines of the Scotch and the Pirc/KID/Modern so much I figured I would enjoy learning about openings with similar contrasts but on the same side.

Yes, the differences between openings and the degree of difference are subjective, but surely there is something that is very different from the Scotch game for white, maybe something passive for example. I don't know enough to know what that might be. Why I asked

If that is still not clear, I will just take more time and come back once I've gotten past 1,000. 
Thanks!

@1

"I'm a beginner player of about 2 weeks (~850 rated)" ++ Then do not worry about openings. You do not win or lose because of the opening, but because of tactical mistakes.

"aspiring for 1200-1500 OTB in a year or so"
++ That is an unambitious goal. 1500 is a matter of blunder checking before you move.

"Most of my training is spent on puzzles from books"
++ Ok, but in a real game nobody tells you there is a tactic, or for whom.

"puzzle rush" ++ Useless

"I am prioritizing those things over openings" ++ Right.

"I am spending some time on openings and have found a lot of value there"
'just forget about the openings and spend all that time on the endings.' - Capablanca

"I am learning the Scotch game for white and the Pirc/KID/Modern for black."
++ Do not learn, just play and analyse your lost games.

"I'd like to incorporate a second opening for black and eventually a second opening for white" ++ This is useless and detrimental. Play the same opening all the time to accumulate experience. Each time you swith openings you lose more.

Firstly congrats on reaching 850 in 2 weeks, there are people on this site who are 600 rated and have been practicing daily for years believe it or not, so you seem to be climbing quickly.

It sounds to me like what you really need is an overview of different openings and positions just to get an idea of what's out there and broaden your horizons, right?

There's an excellent channel for beginners on youtube called 'hanging pawns'. The guy there has series on most openings. Just go there and watch the videos, he'll explain to you a variety of ideas in each of them. As you listen to him speak about the positions you'll also pick up on key chess principles.

A few other great people to learn from who I like are GothamChess, Simon Williams, Daniel Naroditsky (watch his speedrun series, it starts at low elo and explains chess principles very well).

In general, watching videos where people speak about the game is a great way to develop your understanding. There are also some competitive chess channels you can find on youtube with high level commentary. If you can find something like that and just listen to their analysis you will learn quickly as well.

Another thing... while it is true tactics are important for a beginner, don't neglect openings. You've intuited correctly to kind of ignore that bad advice. Some people give that advice... but more players don't agree with this (I've heard numerous GMs including Naroditsky criticize this suggestion), it's really just based on dogmatic misconceptions about how learning takes place, in practice most players learn openings when they start out.

1) people actually enjoy learning openings, and enjoy playing more when they like their opening. this alone would be enough reason to learn them

2) tactic trainers are alright but the best way to learn chess (including tactics) is by playing actual games. The mental process of playing a game is complex... if you were to try to break it down into little subcomponents and learn them in isolation you wouldn't be developing an intuition about the interconnectedness of the various concepts, i.e. how to actually play the game. For example, in actual games tactics arise from good positional play, and you can spot them by understanding errors in the position. Likewise to understand the position you must understand the tactics, and when you don't you get punished.

3) learning openings is one of the ways you come to understand chess principles. It's hard to develop any positional understanding if you don't know what position you're playing.

4) it's very hard to conceptualize how you will approach the midgame if you don't understand the basic ideas in your opening. So you also won't be learning as much about the midgame.

5) you will naturally pick up on tactics as you think about / play the game. You don't have to exclusively focus on tactics to improve at tactics, you can do other things also. Your mind is capable of learning multiple things. Every game presents an opportunity to learn something. There will often be something about the opening you could take away from it. It's not productive to ignore those opportunities.

6) In addition to teaching you common patterns and themes openings will teach you common tactics as well.

7) You don't want to reach 1500 elo and find there's an enormous hole in your abilities because you just deliberately neglected to develop a large chunk of them, now you have to go back and spend another long time (years) mastering the opening and working on positional understanding... when you could have just been doing that all along and picked up the tactics along the way.

I have seen players who took this bad advice end up decent at tactics but horrible at actually playing the game due to having no positional understanding, I've seen one person driven to quit the game in frustration as a result.

Another thing... the Pirc isn't really an opening I'd recommend for beginners, it's hypermodern and it's very punishing when white pushes e5, you have to play extremely sharply. It's true the series of moves are simple and consistent, g6/d6/Bb7/Nf6... maybe this is good for players who dont want to learn lines and it'll work because no one is pushing e5 on you, but you will get killed at some point when players start pushing e5. For a beginner against 1. d4 - if you feel up to the task of learning some actual lines - I'd actually recommend the queens gambit, it's very positional, it is the most classical opening, it follows / will teach you all the classical chess principles.

Infact... for augmenting your play with a different style of opening my recommendation for you would be that you learn the queens gambit from both sides. So 1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Nf6. This focuses on taking space and playing positionally whereas your KID/Pirc are hypermodern (meaning they concede the center), and your scotch is tactical rather than positional.

These are the hanging pawns video series you should watch to get started in the queens gambit. Obviously 1. d4 can lead to many different positions just as 1. e4 can, but this will get you started at least -

For Work and Play ||| Bring Your Truck to Life (youtube.com)

Introduction to the Queen’s Gambit Declined (youtube.com)

Thank you! That is, I think what I am asking. I have been binging lots of Daniel/Gotham/Finegold on youtube. There are compilations of openings that I've watched, but wanted some more specific ideas on what would contrast with the two (Scotch & Pirc) that I am currently learning (as a minor, minor part of my overall game).

I really like the idea of the Queens gambit, as a d4 opening sounds like it would be in good contrast to the e4 of Scotch - and for all the reasons you mention also seems like a good contrast with the Pirc.

Thank you for the hanging pawn links, I will check them out!

Thank you everyone else for your input, I am going to increasing the number of games I play and reduce the puzzles a little. That said, I've already found huge benefits in my ability to spot tactics and I think that is from the puzzles. I'm not sure if just grinding games would have gotten me to this point so fast. Maybe now that I have some basic pattern recognition I can just grind.

I don't think you necessarily have to abandon the tactics trainers, they do seem to be helping you, but I do think it's important to play alot of games and to study the opening. Another thing is it's better to play slower games, like 15/10, since you will have time to think and figure out things.

I'd like to preface this by saying that I don't think if you're a new player you should be exposing yourself to too many openings, there's a decently sized learning curve and there isn't really a reason to make things harder on yourself. But I did improve like that so I can't really criticize it either. I would suggest that you maintain a puzzle rating of at least 600-800 points higher than your highest live game rating if you want to explore openings (this is not as hard as it sounds) to ensure you have a good foundation first.

That being said, 1.b3 and 1.f4

If you're not taking the opening super-seriously then there's not alot of harm in trying different things out either. It's good to at least try out d4 and e4 and see which one you like before you commit to one. And they will both develop very different chess skills.

Openings are not important. Blunders (avoiding them and punishing them) are the only thing you should be concerned with.

This is your last lost game, where you blundered a knight, a bishop and the queen in the span of 5 moves.

https://www.chess.com/game/live/108492277112?username=deadliftdominions

You need to stop doing that, nothing else matters. Slow down, use your time, try to find good moves.

I don't disagree. Like I said, that's how I did things. But I also think you should have a good foundation in tactics first.

It's not like a person can learn only one thing at a time, or there's some giant mental burden imposed by learning an opening that makes it impossible to get better at tactics at the same time.

Someone needs to conduct actual research on how to most effectively train chess players at various elo levels... In school teachers actually follow established methods in how to teach students, methods validated by research. In chess it's usually just ad-hoc advice and armchair commentary. There is no evidence that this approach produces better chess players.

I disagree on both counts. Typical players have very limited time for learning stuff, so it's important to use it effectively. Learning an opening is extremely time consuming - while the benefits are negligible. In the game that I quoted, black played 1. e4 h5 (??), and still won easily, thanks to white's blunders.

If your goal was to reach 1200 as rapidly as possible you would focus exclusively on tactics.... if your goal was to reach 1600+ as rapidly as possible you would not just focus on tactics, but you'd lay the necessary foundations. The fastest route to a point is a straight line. There's not some black and white logical reason a person must focus on one subcomponent of the game at a time... you are just passing up opportunities for learning based on experience, the mind is capable of much more than this. When you actually play chess you don't just exercise one skill at a time, all the skills are connected. You're artificially dividing up the skill of playing chess. And you're greatly understating the value of understanding the opening. How will you learn anything about positional chess if you don't understand the basic ideas of the position you're attempting to play?

It's kind of like providing healthy soil and a good spot in the sun for a seed to grow vs. your approach which is dousing the plant with some steroidal hydroponic mineral solution, you end up with some mutant zucchini that is 2 feet long and oddly shaped / tastes like water.

Fun fact: if you want to get to 1600+, you have to get to 1200 first.

I have no idea what "lay the necessary foundations" mean, but I'm pretty sure it's not "learning some random openings".

I didn't understand your agricultural tale at all, so I have no comment on that.

Fun fact: a * b does not equal a + b.

"I have no idea what "lay the necessary foundations" mean"

Well it's been discussed at length so try going back and reading.

Guilty!

I absolutely agree that correcting blunders should be (and I think, is) my main priority. My approach has been to try and impose a mental checklist when doing puzzles, games, and even openings. But I am for sure a beginner who all to frequently blunders the queen or xyz piece (and misses my opponents doing the same!). From what I've read this will come with time.

I promise y'all, I am not just focusing on openings all day! I spend only a small amount of my time on them. With the Pirc, much of that time is spent trying to understand the moves not just memorize them. Seeing several different variations of the same position with only one variable, for example white's bishop choosing d2, e3, f4, and figuring out why the next move for black changes has (I think), given me better understanding of chess over all. But mostly I just enjoy it. But I am not focusing on it to the detriment of my other practice (I don't think anyway)!

Interesting discussion on approaches to learning this game!