Studying openings

How do you study an opening?
I use studies but there are tons of variations so I can only go about 6 moves deep.

1. play the same opening... let's say the English Opening for White. 2. memorize the pawn structures of the main English Variations. 3. Do a thorough post-game review/ analysis... ( take notes ) for example: In variation 'a' I had no inacurracies until move 11. -make a note of your first inaccuracy and mistake... ( next time you play that opening maybe you get to move 14. without an inaccuracy.) 4. you-tube videos of the opening your working on... chessnetwork has good videos... and check out st.louis chess club for resources. 5. chess books... get a reputable book on the opening you want to study and go through it page by page 'over-the-board'. 6. check out chessgamecollections.com... study the games of the masters. By-the-way: I've Heard many say that Opening Study isn't to important at sub 2000 level.... GET THE FUNDAMENTALS DOWN!!! AND TACTICS, TACtics, tactics.

Usually when you ask about studying openings you get a bunch of people clamoring to tell you DON"T STUDY OPENINGS! OMG!!
But I think it's a good idea to be basically literate with the main most important openings, their names and the first few moves of the main lines. But more important than the moves are the ideas behind them. I like Dereque Kelly's videos for this, they are excellent and free on youtube. Also, everything that Celestial_Object said :)

I can verify you don't need deep study of openings at all practically.

I am 2000 USCF now and I have beaten several IMs and some of my losses I resigned in an endgame where I Was better but got excited and blundered. My last loss I analysed it at the moment I blundered and even the engine had me at +2 right before I blundered the endgame. The conclusion? The opening didn't matter.

At the time of those games all of my openings were the kind you can learn to play competently just watching a two hour training video and a day or three practice online.

You don't need opening theory at all in the sense people think Sub 2500. Just need base strategic principles and a good thinking process. (Ie: a step by step guide on how to think in any position.) Most of the titled players I have played also have easy to play low theoretical lines.

I played one LNM who was an opening guru. But he has one of those photographic memories.

"this person uses computer assistance" k. yeah "2000" rated, lol you need to be good in all things to be a good chess player, middle game, endgame, opening, tactics, positional play etc.

@turtlenecks He's FIDE rated 1890, so he is pretty good. He seems to have just decided to cheat in this game only lichess.org/Ff7TVbAX#15

I looked at some of the other games and they seemed legit

Heres the problem, cheaters dont always play every perfect engine move, that would be obvious, so they might play a weird move to make it seem like a human is playing. Beside, if you cheat, your reputation as an honest player is thrown away, I mean you did go to the lengths of cheating right?

Cheating in one game seems inconsequential from my perspective. It says on his profile that he was on lichess TV when that game happened, so maybe having lots of viewers made the pressure go to his head.

I was just saying that you can't say he's a bad player just because he cheated on here, when you can see in a forum where he cannot cheat, he performs at a FIDE 1890 level, which is pretty good.

Once a cheetah always a cheetah :) Seriously don't focus on studying openings, that's way too time consuming. Focus instead on learning good chess strategy and good chess tactics, then playing good(or at least OK) opening moves will follow as a consequence. Learning opening theory is only good when you play at slightly higher level tournaments, i.e. you know which opponent you are going to face and can study what he plays so you then prepare something for that game. Otherwise it's a big trap, at least from the point of view of improvement. If a game ends at move 15, most of the time it's not opening knowledge that decided anything, rather someone lost a piece early and the opponent capitalized = tactics-not-opening. One needs to remember that most games between players of equal skill aren't decided in the opening.

I know what you mean, Im just saying that cheaters really do not really have reliable reputations, I mean, you cheated, and if one cheat game was all it took for Lichess to notice than that says something even about cheating once.