A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)
Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time and tactics rule the day. Learning the basic opening principles and two basic opening moves that you keep playing (one for white, one for black) and focusing on tactics [1][2] is in my experience the fastest way to advance.After 1700 or so, specific openings can be studied. I suggest playing d4 instead of e4 as white (avoids dealing with the Sicilian) and as black the French defense (for e4) and the KID (for d4). This is mostly coming from the POV of getting good at the game with a minimum of theory preparation, whilst being able to deploy the same openings in blitz and bullet games if need be.Another bonus of getting strong at tactics, is that you'll be able to see and appreciate ideas behind the openings and your game analysis will also improve. There are excellent GM analysis videos on Youtube that one can start extracting value from too.[1] https://www.chesstactics.org[2] https://chesstempo.com/