I know alot about openings. I am ranked about 1700-2200 depending on the site and the type of play and the stage of the moon.

I have to say after years of play that spending all your time studying openings is useless for most people below 2200. (well useless beyond knowing a basic set of openings) Therefore it useless for almost all of us.

I mean nobody follows the lines far anyway at lower levels. Also half a pawn advantage in the middle game is completely useless when compared to a single bad move.

I am just happy to know my openings well enough to get a decent middle game and avoid all the traps. You just need to know enough to survive the opening.

I play boring openings normally and wait for my opponent to lose the game. If he wont then I am quite good at endgames.

I perfer to focus on 1. quality 2. material 3. time. (ie kasparovs advice) and 4.avoiding blunder (my own addition)

Opening study is a waste of time unless you are constantly coming out in inferor positions after the opening. (although I do play to study the french this fall)

Among the myriad of chess players worrying about their openings, there are some who don't pay attention to openings.

Guess who makes it to a higher rating.

opening are not useless. i get sick of playing the same openings and if i decide to plat say the english its good to know its best to fiecetto kingside and castle kingside or double fiencetto. know ing your openings can win you the game. like when and what to trade off to win a pawn so i disagree. by the way my uscf rating is 1974

Chess games at least the ones I play seldom are determined by the openings.

dont get me wrong  openings are a small factor in chess. all im saying is that  weak openings lead  2 weak positions which  can  lead 2 to a losing middle and endgame. even if you avoid traps and losinng material.

I agree with you. But people often put half their efforts into openings to improve. Just seems like overkill if your rated 1400.

I will try to be better in the openings. I'm good at endgame, and good to understand positions, but bad opening moves will not let me get the initiative I need to succeed. a) start the fight about the centre b) develope pieces in a way that the pieces become active; but not have to move away one or two move(s) later without reason c) the pieces shall co-operate; support each other d) don't let the pieces be an obstacle for your other pieces e) don't make moves without reason; all of your moves must have an intention f) if positions are such that it's hard to break through the centre without weakening your own position; then be little patient

ive  tried every  opening under the sun g3 ,c3, nf3, nc3, c4, d4, but you cant lose with e4. as fischer says e4 is best by test

if the point is studying openings is a waste of time true  enough. to improve you should  study things like setting up double  and discover checks sacrificing a pawn 4 a skewer. knight forks bishop forks, how to efficiently adavance your pawns, how 2 force a mate. for example during the 7th chess.com tournament i sacrifices a rook for 3 pass pawns and wonn the game against the  2nd strongest player in my group who has a 2000+ rating, and now im  going 2 the nest round. if  you study you should study my system by aaron nimzowitsch. not how to win in an opening

I think what the OP is trying to say is that there is no point spending hours learning opening theory if you lose the middlegame due to a tactical blunder. Lower rated games are 90% decided by tactics or a blunder. Opening theory doesnt help with this. Yes, be aware of the opening traps, and what you are trying to achieve, but practise tactics before you line every single line. Interestingly enough, I found that I have learnt so much from playing team vote chess games - we get to discuss tactics, and someone usually knows the opening we are playing through and through. I've learnt several lines in the sicllian just by playing team vote chess.

I tend to study openings just so I can understand the strategic goals for both sides. It makes sense to have a rudimentary understanding of the opening so you can reach a comfortable middlegame without being lost on what to do. Whether or not your opponent knows the opening is irrelevant. If he/she deviates from lack of knowledge, you still understand what the point of your opening was & the goals you're trying to reach, so you play sensibly & logically under such deviations. In other words, you know what your plan of attack is, which comes from experience in the middlegame structures you learned to reach from the opening.

That being said, you still have to give equal time to tactics and endgame. Spending time on all three of these phases is obviously the best way to go. Dismissing any one of them, including openings, will only hurt your game.

by the way who needs to study openings when you have game explorer

that explore has led me to some horrible positions by me following the statistically "better" moves!  i think you should know the basic ideas behind a variety of openings but memorizing long lines and variations should be left for the serious players not patzers like me :)

I memorise some openings up to 5-7 moves normally. After that I just wing it. Looking at master games in a particular opening can be better for you anyway. That way you get a feel for the opening without studying lines and still learn whatever from watching better players.

I am not good in openings, I play d4 Nf3 and try to get the knights out my neighbourhood, by doing a3 h3  or a6 h6 with black

I had an interesting discussion with a class A player in my area recently.  I had just come out of a tournament where I had terrible results. 

  Prior to that I spent most of my study time on tactics and had been going over annotated master games related to the openings I play.  I was showing him my games and asking him his opinion.  

   Anyhow, he told me that he had gotten to class A with hardly any tactical study at all, which I found hard to believe, but he said that most of his serious study involved developing his opening systems with the aid of a chess engine, database, and opening books along with lots of game play.  He thought that my problem was largely a matter of not being well versed enough in my opening systems of choice.  He does play more positional openings, but again, I was surprised at the nature of his advice, since just the week before I had talked to another strong player who thought any club player looking to improve should just gambit it up. (the usual tactics/tactics advice)

    Anyway, I think that when people talk about wasting time studying openings, it's advice that applies more to the type of player who is constantly switching from one opening to another and neglecting other aspects of the game, and not so much the guy who commits to slowly learning a given system over a longer period of time. 

You only need to know as much opening theory as your opponents (maybe a move more) - everything else is wasted as soon as they go out of book.

The opening is pretty important. I don't think it's a waste of time studying them at all. I like to play the Trompowsky attack as white, and the Scandinavian defence as black.

I'm pretty new to chess and I've looked into studying openings and I was overwhelmed by how many different openings there are. Where do you start?

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