Advice: Sensible opening theory study

Hello,

I used to play a lot in tournaments at about fide 1800-1900, but haven´t played in years.
I spent a lot of time memorizing opening theory from books and even used chess engines to double check my openings after every game. Eventually i had about 30+ pages of theory for a positional Sicilian defence, where most lines would only give me a very small advantage.

I started playing again recently and now that I look at all that theory it just seems stupid. Why am I memorizing mountains of info just not to get killed and at best get a small advantage?

Thus, I feel it would be much smarter to maybe learn a new sharper opening, where memorizing lines will help me get a big advantages and avoid big mistakes.

Any suggestions on what openings to learn as black or comments on the pain you have gone through over the years by memorizing theory? :)

imo you are headed in the wrong direction looking for a sharper, dare I say cheaper, opening. Sharp openings in general won't help your chess. They are simply based on memory. Sharp, nonsensical mainlines that don't obey normal chess principles are the worst and a waste of time studying. 

You should have been trying to understand all that theory, and likely you don't because if you did you wouldn't be complaining and would have a higher rating. Chess only becomes a game of memory when you're extremely good. 

Thank you for the insightful and honest comment.

I can say that some of the lines in the quiet opening seemed to be more difficult to understand than just crazy tactical lines. But perhaps I should return to those openings and try to understand them better this time.

Recently there was a post from Silman that actually suggested sharp and gambit openings for 1600 - 1800 rated players to better understand tactics, which win 99% of games. So I thought maybe I have been trying to learn chess the wrong way...

I have a book of interviews with grandmasters and their advice to developing players is as follows:

1. Stick with sound, mainstream openings, as these will not be refuted and do not rely on traps that are well known among stronger players, so these openings can be played at every level as you progress.  Otherwise, as you get stronger and face better opponents, you end up having to scrap your opening book and start all over again.

2. Learn only a few systems and play them all the time so that you understand them inside and out.  The ideal would be to learn one opening as white and as black, one reply to 1.e4 and one reply to 1.d4.  One of the most common mistakes club players make is to try to learn a lot of different openings, so they never learn any of them very deeply and spend all their study time on this one phase of the game. 

3. It's more important to understand the ideas behind your openings than to memorize moves.  What is white's usual plan in this opening?  What is black's?  What type of endgame positions are commonly reached? 

4. Play through a lot of master games in your openings and try to guess the moves.  By doing this, you will work on all aspects of the game simaltaneously and you will also learn the opening you are focussing on.

5. Don't waste your time trying to find "the best" opening.  All mainstream openings are good.  What matters is how well you understand the openings you play.  If you understand the resulting positions better than your opponents do, you have an advantage.

Hope this helps.

Then you may start to get good results quickly and smash away your competition... until you reach people who know the basic lines and refutations to them. Then you can either 1) go for even rarer traps or 2) learn properly, and this could be months, years down the line.  

Thank you for taking the time to reply!
All good suggestions.

The_Vision wrote:

I have a book of interviews with grandmasters and their advice to developing players is as follows:

1. Stick with sound, mainstream openings, as these will not be refuted and do not rely on traps that are well known among stronger players, so these openings can be played at every level as you progress.  Otherwise, as you get stronger and face better opponents, you end up having to scrap your opening book and start all over again.

2. Learn only a few systems and play them all the time so that you understand them inside and out.  The ideal would be to learn one opening as white and as black, one reply to 1.e4 and one reply to 1.d4.  One of the most common mistakes club players make is to try to learn a lot of different openings, so they never learn any of them very deeply and spend all their study time on this one phase of the game. 

3. It's more important to understand the ideas behind your openings than to memorize moves.  What is white's usual plan in this opening?  What is black's?  What type of endgame positions are commonly reached? 

4. Play through a lot of master games in your openings and try to guess the moves.  By doing this, you will work on all aspects of the game simaltaneously and you will also learn the opening you are focussing on.

5. Don't waste your time trying to find "the best" opening.  All mainstream openings are good.  What matters is how well you understand the openings you play.  If you understand the resulting positions better than your opponents do, you have an advantage.

Hope this helps.

Take this advice OP. It almost perfectly describes my study plan for the last year and i've gained several hundred points on here in that time.