Last bit of irony: The 'understanding is more important' people sure have memorized their little spiel about how bad memorization is!
Remember! There is no understanding anything without memory.
Here is fyundamental mistake these people make: Memory and understanding are NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE properties. There are intertwined.
Anyone that plays music at a high level (or high level mathematics) KNOWS that memorization is what BUILDS understanding.
Stop this silliness that they are competing with each other.
I dont think anyone is saying that memorization is not important. But what is important is understading what you have memorized. I hear players so often talk about how they know a line 20 moves deep, and Fritz says they are good by .4 pawns. But when you ask them what that means, and why a certain move in an opening is played they dont know why.
Memorizing openings is a good idea. Most people unable to do it.
Seriously.
If you have the skills to completely memorize an entire opening complex you are going to be a very strong chess player.
If you dont understand the ideas behind the moves youre memorizing it does no good to commit them to memory.
If you memeorize all the right moves there is no reason to have an understanding.
All an UNDERSTANDING is in chess is knowing which move is the best to make.
Memory is the single most important skill in chess.
You're wrong.
You would be right if it was possible for humans to memorize every move. Then we wouldn't need understanding. But think about it: Even in the starting position there are 20 possible for moves for both sides on move 1. Do you really believe anyone can memorize everything? And this number won't really go down until pieces come off the board. We just simply know that from the 20 initial moves available to white on move 1 the best moves are 1. e4 and 1.d4. Of course all other moves are playable, but those are the best. And this happens in every position in chess. You have to understand why you are playing the moves you play and only after that can you memorize a lots of moves. Without knowing the reasons behind the moves (which in the opening are often just it develops a piece to a good square, but they may have concrete threats in a given position) you will never learn an opening for 20 moves or so)
But I will simply just ask you this question if you really believe memory is everything in chess: What do you think, how can like 13 years old GM kids beat adult GMs who are playing for 20-30 years on the grandmaster level?(Of course those kids usually become super GMs or something like that, but notice that they have less knowledge and less time to learn)
And no, chess is not a game of information, too much knowlegdge can often confuse you because you may not be able to decide which factors are more important in a given position. Simple is better than complex.
And even if you think about it, computers are not stronger than humans because they have more knowledge, but because they can calculate millions of position during a second. And concrete variations decide everything in chess. Human's can't compete with that level of calculation which is most of the time flawless. Human's can't calculate flawlessly.