Best Openings for Lower Rated Players

I'm interested in what the more experienced players here think are the best openings for beginner/intermediate players. Of course, understanding basic tactics/strategy is more important than remembering opening lines, especially when you first start out.

But, as you get slightly better and no longer fall to simple checkmate tactics or opening traps, I do think there is some benefit to understanding some opening theory. Gaining an advantage early on can definitely win games.

Since many of us casual chess players don't have the spare time to read up on a ton of openings and their variations, I think the best openings are those that limit your opponent to as few lines as possible. The fewer lines you need to learn, the better.

For that reason, I as a beginner/intermediate (only 1100 online) recommend the Queens Gambit as white and the French Defence as black.

If you're playing white 1. d4 is great because 80% of the time you're gonna get ...d5 (at my level) so you're going to get a Queens gambit position, 10% of the time you might get ...Nf3 but in both scenarios playing c4 next is good and a lot of the same ideas and themes are similar

For black I say avoid the Italian game because that's the go-to for a lot of players at my level, and there's so many variations and traps that you need to learn. So against e4 play I'd say play the French defence, against d4 I'd say play e6 to invite them into the French defence, if they c4 anyway then turn it into a queen gambit declined.

So to summarise, I think the best two openings for lower ranked players to learn are queens gambit and French defence.