To know what your style is, currently, will require close study of your recent games and perhaps some experimentation, to see how you perform under various conditions.

Play as much chess as you can, for a period, and record all your games. Playing on ICC is perfect for this phase. Use a program such as Chess Base Light and analyze the games carefully to see what your strengths and weakneses are and discover the preferences you have that determine your style.

Utilise the database capabilties to analyse statistics, you may discover some surprising trends.

For instance, lately I win most of my games with Black and seem to be doing badly with White. This sort of information could tell you what is working for you and where you need to improve or possibly make radical changes.

Changing your repertoire is a way of changing your style also, so decide what style you would like to play in. Try to keep what works while trying new approaches in the areas that are ineffective.

What is your philosophy or approach to the game ? Do you play to win always ? How do you prefer to win ? Do you play to win with white and draw with black ? How flexible are you ? Do you like to use the element of surprise ? The answers to questions like these will affect your choice of repertoire.

The player should also set clear goals for themself. If your goal is to make the National Team of your country, for instance, it will require a very different set of openings than if you merely wish to beat your next-door neighbor every weekend.

Another important factor in deciding on your repertoire is which opponents will you have to face. If you know what openings are popular among your most frequent opponents you should consider knowing those lines well or at least the ways in which you'll avoid them.

Pick Model Players to study. Carefully studying the games of a particular player can be very useful as you develop your opening play. The expert in that line or famous player that inspires you , will show you, through their games , the practical problems and solutions to the problems that you'll also face.

While doing your study of opening lines remember to keep improving your general chess understanding also. The way that the Opening is linked to the other phases of the game is of extreme importance. For this reason you must study complete games in whichever line you choose. Too often someone runs out of ideas after playing the book moves because they are not aware of this.

Some openings ( e.g. the Ruy Lopez Exchange Variation ) are played with the endgame in mind. Even if you play a gambit line the knowledge that the endgame will possibly be bad for you will help you play the line appropriately ( i.e.sharp in the middle game).