Best Rating to begin studying openings ?

As fara as i know, no one has said dont correct your opening mistakes.  What i mean by "studying" openings, is until youre are around 1800-2000, you realy only need to know, and understand the openings you play.  No one under 1800 needs to know, or be concerned about a novelty on move 18 of the Berlin, but thats just me.

I don't think anyone is asking about finding novelties, but rather correcting mistakes, learning plans, learning why certain moves are avoiding, learning about typical pawn structures from openings you play, playing over master games from the openings etc.

If you keep getting bad positions to start from, the game becomes a lot harder. I don't see the logic in not devoting any time to an important aspect of the game.

Yes, focus on principles more initially, and only worry about more intensive study when this isn't working. But it surely helps confidence and on the clock if you have a general idea of which lines you want to play.

Then again, perhaps it depends how you define opening study.

"You don't suddenly hit a point at the extremely round arbitrary figure of 2000 where it is useful, and not before. Nor do all players at the same rating have the same weaknesses in their game."

I highly doubt when people say this they are that literal and strict. I'm sure they would accept 1999 rated players who showed most/all of the characteristics they thought important.

Just because we don't have an exact cutoff for the term "tall" for example doesn't mean it can't be used meaningfully.

It's not like saying tall though. It's like saying 6 foot 5.

Anyway point remains. Useful for everyone to a degree. It depends where your weaknesses are. More importantly it's a game, do what you enjoy.

I have been upper 1800s/lower 1900s for a bit and have climbed a few points from there lately. I have never studied openings and am interested to learn from Till-98 that I am guaranteed not to reach 2,000. I had wondered briefly whether it might happen.

There are a lot of ways to become good, just some are more efficient than others. There are probably humans on this earth that could become 2200 if they had Carlsen-like talent at tactics and trained a ridiculous amount, only on tactics. Although this same 2200 might become 2400+ pretty easily just by becoming a bit more well rounded.

The answer is whenever you want. I think I started around 1200 or so, I'm about 1400 now, and can't honestly tell you how much of that is due to my opening knowledge, but I can say that seeing the "best" moves, and then analyzing and determining the reasons why they are best, is incredibly useful, and actually teaches you how to punish inaccuracies in the opening by your opponent, but it's very much that you get out of it what you put into it.

You don't ever need to study anything though. I don't study endgames because it bores me, and it is already a big roadblock for improving, but I'm okay with that. My enjoyment comes mostly from positional play in the opening/middlegame, so I focus on that.

I do recommend the chessopenings.com channel on Youtube for not only a brief outline of tactics, but also positional ideas and strategy. I also like some of the Move by move books by Everyman Chess.

heh. indeed. most people starting out don't want to learn endgame themes or some opening lines. it's too slow or an waste of time because tactics & combinational play serves them well vs opponents at the same level and below. becoming too dependent on such strategy forces you to rethink when going up vs stronger opposition.

as in life, if you'd done things the right way first-you wouldn't have ta step back and have to correct them then start progressing, realistically.

By 'opening study' you mean studying all the variations of one particular line that you use.And that means going up to 15 20 lines in one opening.Rather you should try to absorb some of the basic ideas of the openings you play so that you dont play a move non-related to the opening you play.example Nc3 in the lopez.But of course you should go over 5 moves of any opening just to get a feel for it

I think what nobody is saying on here is that it depends on your rating in relation to yout endgame and tactical strength.  If you stink tactically, but are milking all the winning chances out of positions and drawing chances out of positions, you've got a long way to go.  Players advanced in the endgame (because they started with endgames) will make it to USCF 2000 before they should start studying openings.  If you are strong tactically, but weak in engames, starting at 1750-1850 is reasonable.  If you go on CT ART or chess.com's tactics trainer and score 2000+, yet have a rating of 1750, then you need to start doing openings (and endgames!).

My main point is that there is no hard and fast rating, and the rating needs to be considered with respect to general positional, tactical, endgame, and other knowledge.  Heck, if you don't have a sense of what sorts of tabiyas will arise from doing lots of tactics puzzles, memorizing openings (and that's all it would be) is a waste of time --and exceedingly miserable.

There is a difference between not caring about the opening, learning the opening principles, studying the opening, and developing an opening repertoire.

Don't believe that stuff.

It is never too early or too late to start studying openings. The real questino should be, "How much effort should I put into studying openings.".

If you are still low rated, I would say not more than is necessary to help you learn to get into a playable middle game.

Every little thing you learn whether it is openings, tactics or end games has the potential to help you improve your game.

Here are 2 blog posts I wrote for low rated players interested in improving their opening:

http://www.chess.com/blog/kleelof/my-opening-study

http://www.chess.com/blog/kleelof/benefits-of-knowing-basics-of-openings