Can someone play without openings?

"... The whole structure of the game may be the result of the first few moves. For the sake of experience and practice it may be well to vary the openings, but for the sake of efficiency it might be better to stick to one single opening for the attack, and one single opening or method of development for the defence. This system may be followed until the one opening in question has been mastered. Then the player may take up a new opening, and thus gradually reach the point where he feels familiar with half a dozen different openings. Half a dozen different openings, well learned, are about all the average player needs to obtain good results. ..." - from Capablanca's Primer of Chess

Sure, Follow the basic rules...control the center, knights then bishops, castle to protect the king, link the rooks, control open ranks. dont commit the queen until she is really needed

-anabelle- 

I agree with most of your post. I didn't know that about Julio Granda. Pretty cool.

Although, I'd argue that Granda lost not because of opening knowledge, but because of a tactical oversight (had he played 12.Bd2 instead of Rd1, white would've been fine and Kasparov's combination wouldn't have happened). So it was tactics that decided the game there, not opening knowledge (IMO).

But your point is still well made.

Sure. Assuming one consistently practices and hones their tactical vision.

The current #1 in the world even seems to use that approach:

"It’s no secret for anyone that my opening preparation is inferior to Anand’s and Kramnik’s and that of many others. They’ve got much more experience, prepared ideas… They’re great specialists in that! But I try to place my pieces correctly on the board, so the advantage won’t be so great that I lose immediately." — Carlsen, 2011

Notice he doesn't say that he tries to study openings more. No, he says that he tries to place his pieces correctly on the board.

Look the position, and think it out. Works for him, anyway.

Somewhere along the way our argument seems to have evolved. It almost seems like a "study openings" versus "study tactics" discussion. But that was never my original point. My original point was: if you want to improve your opening play, work on tactics.

You can still study openings if you want to. I have no position against studying openings. But I do know that working on your tactics will improve your opening play, whether you study your openings or not.

Try this .

System openings are easily learnt, then you can get on with other things. For example, you could play Stonewall attack with White, Stonewall defence and , say, the Fort Knox French with Black, and do OK.

 That I can totally agree with and generally, I also agree that  for most amateurs, any minute spent training tactics might be more profitable than the same minute spent studying openings.

This said, my main objection against just skipping opening theory altogether is that even at my level of play, I tend to be more comfortable (and by extension, more successful) with openings I like and know (to a degree). You can probably make a point that my games are still decided by my or my opponent's patzer no matter the opening we play, but I'm more likely to do that in a position I don't like, probably because I don't get what's going on at the board. And while playing an opponent that's as good (e.g. bad) as me, part of my (or their) success depends on the question which opening we play.

So I'm not advocating for going indepth and memorizing long sequences. But I like to know the fundamentals of an opening, the plans and strategies they might involve. The rest is mainly playing those openings, analysing my games and games played by the WMs and GMs until pattern recognition sets in (and yeah, training tactics is a great tool to train pattern recognition, I won't deny that).

Murakami is more or less correct, although openings do exist which aren't tactical at all. But, in any case, when we play chess, we start off by developing pieces, moving some pawns etc. We have to do it and that is an opening. The start of any game is an opening. At whatever level we play at, we develop a predilection for certain sequences of moves and we're bound to notice patterns and develop ideas about what we should do if such-and-such happens. This is opening theory. The idea that chess can be played without opening theory of some sort is completely ridiculous.

 SlowMove,

For someone who says tactics training is enough(to the extent that one can completely skip studying openings), you have not bothered to do a single tactics training at chess.com. Don't you practice what you preach?

If you study strictly tactics, you can make to Expert.  As long as you have a solid understanding of Opening Principles, you can become a very good player.

Yes, I do; just not on this site.

Well, the OP said, "I don't really like to study openings and I think that other parts of the game are more importants. With that in mind, can I get away "skipping" the opening study?"

So, for me, the answer is: yes. You can get away with skipping opening study, if you focus on other parts of the game instead. Such as tactics.

For others, the answer might be different. To each their own. What works for one player might not work for another.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/opening-theory-is-pointless-for-most-people-that-will-ever-play-why-bother

So, why didn't Evans or Fine put working 2017 opening ideas in their books?

Does he say that he doesn't study openings at all?

I did not see the part about not having a position against studying openings.

"... If you're losing games in the openings, study tactics. ...
Fixed it for you. ;P" - SlowMove (~2 days ago)

Would your original point have been better communicated by writing, "amended it for you"?

Are you the one who told us about using Fundamental Chess Openings and opening wizard software?

A chess master came to give a talk and demonstration to the county and state trophy winning high school chess club I coached.  The teenagers asked him what openings he liked best and were surprised when he replied, "I don't memorize lots of opening variations. The only purpose of the opening is to get me to a playable middle game."

You do need to know the basic opening principles, knowing it's a fight for space, tempo, and force and how to best win those fights. A great book is the old one by Larry Evans and 6 other Grandmasters called How to Open a Chess Game.

It's also very helpful to know the ideas behind several openings. That not only allows you to play faster early in the game, using less clock time, knowing certain positions and not falling into traps, but various openings lead you to common middle game strategies.  For example, the Bishop's Opening and Vienna Game aim for a King-side attack.  The Sicilian Defense begins a Queen-side attack with move 1.  The Caro-Kann and Slav and French Defenses aim at for solid positions White will crash and burn against - followed usually by a Queen-side or Center Counter Attack, usually beginning with the c- or f- Pawns.

But it's not necessary to memorize reams of moves: the ideas behind the openings plus a knowledge of opening principles will get you to a playable middle game.

That playable middlegame thing is advocated by Portisch in a chapter that is about 40 pages and concludes with, "... I urge the reader to do his own analysis in the development of an opening repertoire." I have often seen that book praised, but it should perhaps be mentioned that, having been written about four decades ago, it used descriptive notation (1 P-K4 P-K4 2 N-KB3 N-QB3 etc.). Also, the reader should perhaps be warned that, apart from Evans himself, none of the GM authors "was given a specific topic or assignment." For more overall organization, one might want to turn to a book by a single author, such as Discovering Chess Openings by GM John Emms (2006)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627114655/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen91.pdf
or Openings for Amateurs by Pete Tamburro (2014)
http://kenilworthian.blogspot.com/2014/05/review-of-pete-tamburros-openings-for.html
https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/tag/openings-for-amateurs/
https://www.mongoosepress.com/excerpts/OpeningsForAmateurs%20sample.pdf
or Winning Chess Openings by Yasser Seirawan (1999).
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627132508/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen173.pdf

Like I said, I haven't read those books. I'm guessing, for the most part, they did put working ideas into them. If the ideas don't work by today's standards, though, then it's obviously because of tactics.