Is Learning Chess Openings a Waste of Time?

You’ve certainly been wondering if you should learn your openings first, and then come to other aspects like Tactics/Strategy and Endgames, or the other way around. It is a complex decision for most of us so let’s delve in and try to understand our problem and solve it.

This problem touches a lot of intermediate and advanced players. We want to be able to master our openings because of the fear of entering a line we don’t know, where your opponent might have an advantage because he knows it better since he plays it, and we are more likely to fall into traps, thus getting a terrible position or straight up down material (or get checkmated).

So what we try to do is learn every possible line with all the sidelines, which themselves have variations and sub-variations…which needs a LOT of work. But the thing is, even if you have a Lifetime Repertoire course which contains 600 variations to learn, there will be a moment you will be out of prep. I will show a quick example:

If I was tactically sharp enough I could’ve played 11.Nf5! winning me a pawn because if 11…Qxb2?? 12.Na4 traps the queen. Why did I miss this tactic? Because I simply put too much time in learning openings and ignored to study my tactics. Ironic right? Putting a lot of time learning every line but getting hit with a weird move and not being able to punish it.

I am sure if I gave this position to someone who never studied the French Defense but is tactically sharp, he would’ve found 11.Nf5!  

Final answer:

What does that tell you? (or tell me)…Studying tactics is of a higher priority than learning the openings in depth. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying you should leave studying openings to dedicate all your time on tactics, but you should probably put less time in learning openings. Just learn the basics and plans, and put the rest of your time to study your Tactics and Strategy. The moment you are out of book, only these two can save you! 

My friends, I get that learning openings is fun, but stop worrying about this fear of being out-prepared, stop being worried about learning your Najdorf Sicilian until the 30th move or spending 2 hours on the latest novelties, let’s leave that to the masters of this game. Prioritize your endgames, tactics and strategy. 

Word for Beginners: 

I did not forget about you guys, my friends under 1000 ELO. You guys just need to know the basic principles of the openings:

• Control the centre with your pawns if possible
• Develop your minor pieces
• Castle your king to safety
• Develop your heavy pieces (in this order: Queen - Rooks)

After this, all you have to do is solve puzzles, and learn basic endgames (strategies are not yet for you). Play a lot of games, analyze them to showcase your mistakes, and next game try to not repeat them. You will repeat them! haha, but over time they become less and less until you are able to detect blunders easily. 

Final words:

My friends! I hope this was helpful and I hope you were able to get insights from this. Let me know your thoughts on the comments and if you’ve encountered the same problem, it’s always helpful. Thank you for reading!