As a beginner, you shouldn't be studying specific openings, and you absolutely should not be trying to memorize opening moves. Until you reach 1600 or so, you only need to follow basic opening principles.

• Move your king or queen's pawn to let your bishops out.
• Develop your knights and bishops (i.e. move them off their starting squares) - the general rule of thumb is knights before bishops, and kingside pieces first so you can castle quickly.
• Don't move a piece twice unless to make a capture, and don't send your pieces off on an adventure while others are still on their starting squares.
• Castle your king to safety within the first 10 moves.
• Don't waste time moving side pawns.
• Don't bring the queen or rooks out too early.
• Pay attention to what your opponent does - you may need to break the above rules in order to respond to a threat. Players of all levels get into trouble playing the opening on auto-pilot.

Lists of opening guidelines usually also say "Control the centre", but this is actually a fairly complex subject for someone new to chess to understand.

Obviously, at higher levels, opening play is more complex than this, but you need to realise that, at low levels of chess, how you play the opening is not massively important. Games will be decided by tactics and blunders, usually very simple ones. If you play against other novices, they will not know openings either.

What you should really be studying is (in order of importance) tactics, endgames, and positional principles. If you focus on this, and don't worry about the opening beyond the general guidelines above, you will see much more improvement than if you waste your time studying openings. It really does not matter how you start a game if it ends on move 15 when you drop a piece or overlook a simple checkmate. New players blame this on the opening, when in fact it has nothing to do with the opening and everything to do with tactics and elementary blunder checking.

As a beginner, you shouldn't be studying specific openings, and you absolutely should not be trying to memorize opening moves. Until you reach 1600 or so, you only need to follow basic opening principles.

• Move your king or queen's pawn to let your bishops out.
• Develop your knights and bishops (i.e. move them off their starting squares) - the general rule of thumb is knights before bishops, and kingside pieces first so you can castle quickly.
• Don't move a piece twice unless to make a capture, and don't send your pieces off on an adventure while others are still on their starting squares.
• Castle your king to safety within the first 10 moves.
• Don't waste time moving side pawns.
• Don't bring the queen or rooks out too early.
• Pay attention to what your opponent does - you may need to break the above rules in order to respond to a threat. Players of all levels get into trouble playing the opening on auto-pilot.

Lists of opening guidelines usually also say "Control the centre", but this is actually a fairly complex subject for someone new to chess to understand. All you need to know is that moving at least one of your centre pawns 2 squares is usually good, both is great if you can get away with it, and your knights and bishops can easily be moved onto squares where they "attack" the centre.

Obviously, at higher levels, opening play is more complex than this, but you need to realise that, at low levels of chess, how you play the opening is not massively important. Games will be decided by tactics and blunders, usually very simple ones. If you play against other novices, they will not know openings either.

What you should really be studying is (in order of importance) tactics, endgames, and positional principles. If you focus on this, and don't worry about the opening beyond the general guidelines above, you will see much more improvement than if you waste your time studying openings. It really does not matter how you start a game if it ends on move 15 when you drop a piece or overlook a simple checkmate. New players blame this on the opening, when in fact it has nothing to do with the opening and everything to do with tactics and elementary blunder checking.