Breadth vs. Depth in Opening Knowledge

It seems to me that a plausible compromise is to occasionally play over sample games in whatever opening catches your interest. At one time, we had a regular participant who would insist on the educational value of the Ruy Lopez, but that can really be a lot of work if one wants to play for the whole 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 a6 4 Ba4 Nf6 5 0-0 Be7 6 Re1 b5 7 Bb3 d6 8 c3 0-0 9 h3 thing. For those of us who are not going to get anywhere near a title anyway, I would imagine that it is sufficient to look at some games.

Yes HilkZ!- from what I’ve read, Fischer believed that there was a correct way to play in a position and that one should completely master his or her own system/line of play that they believed in. He mostly played the King’s Indian against all closed openings- Nf3,c4,d4...and for e4 he believed in the Najdorf. Even on the white side, he would find one path to stick to. (For example, Nc3 against the French because he didn’t really believe the winawer was good for black and he played the two knights against the caro kann, although he did give it up for the KIA later)
This is not to say he didn’t ever surprise his opponents of course. But that aside...

Openings are fun and all, but even up to the GM level, nearly every game is won by a combination - or the threat of it, whether or not the game is still in the waters of “opening theory”.

I would say, tactical acumen should be the most important thing to train for the majority of chess players up to the master level where players start to have some serious defensive playing skills. I’m not saying you should completely neglect Opening theory - studying the ideas and thematic patterns in openings is great fun and will go a long way in helping you form your own plans in your own game. I just wanted to warn against neglecting the development of one’s tactical sharpness(?) and endgame play for the opening alone. (A mistake I’ve made before!)

Fischer got so good by specializing in a limited repertoire but he chose very complicated openings to the extent possible (Najdorf, KID, Gruenfeld, Ruy Lopez, etc) and learned them better than anyone else in the world. He would win even when his opponents knew what he was going to play due to his better mastery of the complicated structures that resulted. He was a master of the Ruy Lopez and usually chose that as White against 1 ... e5. However, he was quite proficient in a great many openings and believed it was important to learn the ideas of many openings. When a lower rated player once asked him what book he should read to improve, he said to read Ideas Behind the Chess Openings by Rueben Fine. When the man asked what book he should read after that, he said "Read it again". When Fischer played Botvinnik, he could tell his opponent was quite ready for his KID, so he played a Gruenfeld. Karpov has said that you haven't really played chess unless you've played the Ruy Lopez. You can learn many things that increase your overall playing strength from most Classical openings, so I think it's important to spend some time studying things you don't intend to play often or at all, but you still need to spend enough time focusing on a specialized repertoire to become very proficient in them. Just not to the exclusion of everything else, or there will be big gaps in your chess understanding.

The story that I have repeatedly seen is that Frank Brady asked Fischer about improvement and Fischer replied,  "For the first lesson, I want you to play over every column of Modern Chess Openings, including the footnotes. And for the next lesson, I want you to do it again." In Discovering Chess Openings (2006), GM John Emms told the story and commented that Fischer was being "tongue-in-cheek, I'm sure".

If you want to think, "ok, I am going to learn lots and lots of opening lines just to have a better understanding of many structures" I think this is a flawed approach. Look through many different master games with many different openings but the focus shouldn't be on the moves themselves but the critical moments later in the game and how the masters arrived where they did. You'll learn more this way and not be bogged down with thinking you need to understand everything

Also, in regards to Bobby sticking to his guns, we can see that by the time he played in the WCC he was transitioning into a universal player. I think most GMs of his day were specialists in one line or the other. Fischer laid the seeds down for later generations to become universal in their approach to the opening. He was a genius ahead of his time in this regard. Had he stuck with it I can only imagine chess would have evolved in a much different way as we didnt see players gravitate towards universal play styles until the 90s and 2000s when players like Kramnik, Anand, and Ivanchuk emerged. Nowadays it seems commonplace that all of these top players can play any position. Look at Naka or Carlsen.. both had distinct styles but we see they have adapted their games to play any style

"... Overall, I would advise most players to stick to a fairly limited range of openings, and not to worry about learning too much by heart. ..." - FM Steve Giddins (2008)
"... Playing an opening in real games is of vital importance - without this kind of live practice it is impossible to get a 'feel' for the kind of game it leads to. ..." - GM Nigel Davies (2005)

(Re: Post #29)
Lol, I don't think Fischer was very fond of Frank Brady (or most others who talked to the press or wrote about him).

"... This book is the first volume in a series of manuals designed for players who are building the foundations of their chess knowledge. The reader will receive the necessary basic knowledge in six areas of the game - tactcs, positional play, strategy, the calculation of variations, the opening and the endgame. ... To make the book entertaining and varied, I have mixed up these different areas, ..." - GM Artur Yusupov