The best first opening isn't the most popular one — it's the simplest

Ask ten strong players what a beginner should open with and you'll get ten confident, contradictory answers. The truth is less exciting than any of them: your first opening should be the one that makes good habits automatic, not the one engines rate highest. Simplicity, at the start, beats sophistication every time.

Play openings that force good habits

1.e4 followed by natural development (knights before bishops, castle by move six or seven) teaches central control and quick development almost by accident — the moves that are 'obviously right' in these openings also happen to be the theoretically correct ones. Compare that to a sharp gambit line where the 'right' move is a precise, memorised exception to normal principles; that's a much worse place to build habits, however strong it might be in a database.

Avoid openings that reward memorisation over understanding

Heavily forcing, theory-dense lines punish you hard for a single wrong move and don't teach you much when you get it right — you played a memorised sequence, not a plan. As a new player, that trade is bad twice over: high risk, low learning. Save those openings for once you already understand why the moves work.

You will outgrow your first opening — that's the point

A simple, principled opening isn't a permanent home; it's training wheels that teach you what a good position looks like. Plenty of strong players started on exactly these lines and moved to sharper repertoires once their calculation and understanding caught up. There's no shame in outgrowing an opening — it did its job.

If you're not sure where to start: 1.e4 as White, meeting 1.e4 with an open game and 1.d4 with a solid, well-supported centre as Black. Three simple choices, and every game from here teaches you something that carries over no matter what you play next.