Preferred method for learning openings

What are your favourite resources and methods to learning a chess opening? Chess.com lessons, youtubers (which ones) Opening explorer and your own research into master games, Chessable?

A good book plus a thematic daily tournament works for me. Later on mastergames and youtube videos can be studied.

I like YouTube for finding gambits that no one will recommend in forums. favorites are John Schrantz who's taking an indefinite break from chess, Levy at Gotham Chess and my favorite is Igor at Chess academy simply for turning me on to my current FAVORITE line, the Englund Hartlaub/Charlick gambit and explaining it in plain English (with a heavy Russian accent! HAHAHAHA!). I think that he thinks a bit more like me than the others.

once I find the HARD TO FIND lines no one talks about, I go to "the site with the amateur database", and filter results for 1600-2000 and follow the carnage to the juicy traps. I remember begging for an amateur database for all of the out of book theory that happens in the real world, and no one could understand WHY! that's where you get to cheat off EVERYONE's homework and find out where EVERYONE went wrong.

Ideally, if I'm working off a youtube video, I enter the moves (often hard when OPs talk fast and never show their move lists on screen), I enter the moves at a different site's opening book editor, BEST to do it one ply at a time for one's WHOLE book so transpositions always point up to the most popular lines. I quit trying to create a smith morra book when it got to be such a tangle of transpositions that I couldn't keep track of it anymore, and it doesn't help that the site only shows theory for the FIRST line you entered with everything else transposing to THAT. it's also confusing when transpositions go DOWN in one's theory tree where they get lost and/or make editing theory a nightmare

TREE BASED! variations within variations within variations notation is abomination on par with "KNXQ3" old school notation.)

then. I'm ready to train, BUT I don't find the trainer optimized. i hate RANDOM "spaced repetition" as it always trips me up on move orders, and when I try to study line by line, the trainer SKIPS moves it THINKS I've memorized and drops me in the middle of a position with no context (remembering the path I took to get there), so I'm thinking i'll just go back to converting all of my theory into individual games and then just drill them all, one at a time until I have them TRULY memorized, so then new branches have the context of WHERE they break in an already familiar line.

all the randomness gets confusing and makes my heard hurt so much I doze off.

I also like to create my own trees that I can add stats and evaluations to. it's reassuring to see one getting to a +5 position or one that's winning 75% of the time. (the downside is the frustration you get losing a game in a line you should win in)

I find YouTube is mostly click bait or low quality.

I had formal coaching for my repertoire and currently focused on expanding them with engine preparation and analysis by understanding a few key ideas.

Other times, I skim master or my games or analysis; but not to deep unless I am exploring middle game plans.

IMHO, there are two ways to learn an opening. the practical way and the academic way. Both involve self analysis of your games and memorization. The practical way is to simply play a bunch of fast time control games. Where the emphasis is not on winning the game but studying piece development for both sides in the opening. This will give you a practical understanding of the general flow of the opening. the added benefit of the practical method is you will see multiple real world responses that have nothing to do with theory and teach you how to deal with them. you are not going to find those moves in a theory book.. With each mistake, you will tell yourself, well, I'm not going to do that again. the academic way is to get a book about the specific opening and study it. Playing through every position with a board and peices. This will teach you actual mainline theory and why certain real world responses don't work. As you memorize the opening, each time that your opponent plays theory as well, and you can't remember the proper response, go look it up after the game and learn that particular move. And memorize one move deeper each time you play it in a real game.

I also like to write up my own reppetoire using Lichess Studies. You can take something you found in a book or elsewhere and add to it with common responses and how best to counter them. When you find yourself forgetting you can go back to the Lichess study and look and read your notes and save yourself some time.

Personally I like chessable, it's a modern approach similar to an opening book, I think books would be best value and overall the greatest approach, but I've been lucky to find some extremely instructive chessable courses that function similar to a book. Everytime I learn new lines there I add them to Lichess and copy the notes over, as it can be hard to go back and find lines from Chessable itself but Lichess Studies make that easy (Chess.com's analysis and library features are not as good) - Plus it's like writing notes while reading a textbook at university - it helps you remember.

Can you recommond some opening books?

That really depends on you preferred openings and language.

Some of my preferred writers (in alfabethical order) are: Cox, Emms, Gligoric, Carsten Hansen, Konstantinopolsky, Kotronias, Kosten, Larsen, Pinski, Schandorff, Taimanov, Wells, Simon Williams, Aagaard. But there are many others.

If you are looking for a repertoire book I will recommend Graham Burgess: An Idi0t-Proof Chess Opening Repertoire (sorry for the spelling, but chess.com does not allow the real name).

My recommended resources

• openingtree.com, free database of Master and amateur Lichess games. Easy to use and gives information on common moves at lower ratings. 
• chessbook.com, a fairly simple tool to explore openings and train them. I don’t use it myself because I use Chess Position Trainer
• Chess Position Trainer, my main tool. I’m super satisfied with the functionality, but I wouldn’t recommend it at the moment (the tool is a bit obsolete)
• Chessvision.ai, my newest discovery. Select any (common) opening position and scan it, you’ll be redirected to a YouTube video discussing that position.
• Lichess Studies are worth checking out
• The content creators I watch most often regarding openings are Gotham Chess and Daniel Naroditsky, most recently the latter more than the former.

These are my general recommendation, I assume you're already familiar with most of them.

Hi!

As with any other subjects like playing guitar, speaking a foreign language or improving at mathematics, the preferred way of learning chess openings is with the help of a teacher or coach, especially for players still in the beginner and intermediate levels.

If you are interested in: developing your chess skills, learning opening principles and building an opening repertoire, you could check out my posts:

https://www.chess.com/blog/maafernan/chess-skills-development

https://www.chess.com/blog/maafernan/openings-for-intermediates

https://www.chess.com/blog/maafernan/instructive-games-i-opening-principles

Good luck!

Be careful with Carsten Hansen. Whoever the editor of his books are, which could easily be himself, is atrocious at editing.

In his book on 1.b4, all if the moves are there, but the lines on page 54 are a jumbled mess and took me for ever to figure out what they were.

In his book on 1.g4, he refers to Claude Bloodgood, a well known chess player who spent the final 30+ years of his life in a Virginia Prison. Well, the author says, at the time of writing, which was the first half of 2023, that he was still there serving time at the age of 85. The calculation would be accurate if it were true. And it isn't like he died in the previous few months. Claude died on August 4th, 2001, at the age of 64, more than 21 years prior to the writing.

The only books of his that I have seen be well written are those he wrote for other publishers that actually have decent editors, like Everyman. For example, The Closed Sicilian Move by Move.

By the way, I own all 3 books I mentioned, so not making any of this up.

If you are under 1500 then watch gotham chess on youtube

Naroditsky probably becomes far more useful as early as 1000 , but Gotham is a good blend of entertaining and informative

Hi, is "FCO: Fundamental Chess Openings" a good chess opening book?

Or ,could you recommond some opening books?

thank you

I get a little booked up by watching YouTube and then get to play and analyse

My preferred method for learning an opening goes something like this:

1. Look at some Master games in that opening and decide that I like the positions.
2. Play the opening.
3. Get crushed flat.
4. Look at some more Master games in the line.
5. Figure out WHY I lost. 
6. Go to 2.