Chess Openings Are Quite Worthless

What are you talking about? In what way are they incorrect after the 4th move? Are the stats of who usually wins just wrong somehow? There are some chess.com games which should not be there but for the most part the players are usually at least 2200, and therefore master.

Lol, I mean real rating and real games. Chess.com games in general don't deserve to be up there at all, because they're either inflated or have the possibility of computer use. I'm not sure how many chess.com games there are though, there could be too many and that's screwing up stats.

from what i'm learning as i go, (please take with a grain of salt as i'm not a great player ..  yet...  ;-) ) at lower levels, the individual openings are not that critical, but it's good to learn the IDEA's behind them (ie: in the french its common for black to push f6 and d5 to gain a pair of strong central passed pawns), the thousand and one variations of every major opening are overkill at lower levels, but learning the concepts at lower levels is critical for improvement.

i'll read an opening book, not to learn every variation to 25 moves deep, but to learn common tactics and traps in an opening.

Most of the games in the game database are 2200+ FIDE (Master) games or games that are important otherwise (including those played before ratings were introduced). There shouldn't be any Chess.com games in the database.

I'd have to disagree with this comment.  By acquainting yourself with the typical plans, ideas, and themes of your opening you still tend to be on more familiar territory once you've both gone out of book.  If they do go out of book,sometimes they do so in such a way that even if you don't know a direct book reply, you can use what you know of other similar lines to come up with an analogous reply (not neccesarily always good).

I remember the first time I played against the Smith Morra ganbit. I was playing a class B player a young kid named Ron W. Henley. He whipped my butt. He has gone a little further than I, he is a GM now who worked with J. Polgar.

Maybe he thinks that they're all chess.com games because it's the "chess.com database". And yeah mostly its masters but, although there shouldn't be, I have noticed some chess.com games getting added in.

Openings are very important even in club level chess.  Playing a specific opening a number of times or studying the opening gives the played a great understanding of the various middlegame positions.  And usually, the game will be decided by who plays best in the middlegame.  Understanding the middlegame position is the first step to outplaying your opponent in the middlegame.

Really when you're sutdying the opening past move 10, you're often just studying early to even late middlegames where the correct move and plan is being analyzed. 10 moves into the closed ruy lopez is a critical middlegame position, but the opening theory is still going on for awhile to move 30 sometimes simply because of the complexity of the plans. In most openings like the sicilian it's because of the complex tactics.

None other than Nigel Short claimed that he got to 2400 ELO on tactics alone. I'm guessing his claim is (at least) a mild exaggeration, and he certainly is not the typical chess player. Still, it gives one GM's view about the relative importance of game components for those not pretending to titled levels of chess.

Well what if I said I got where I was studying strategy and planning (which in fact half of which came from opening study, my understanding of the center got so much better ever since I started studying and playing the french)? As long as I don't make a blunder I usually do pretty well. Only now am I actually studying tactics seriously out of puzzles and that is what will take me to class A. but to get to class B I did not have an advanced knowledge of tactics, but I was just able to avoid obvious blunders and win positionally.

You are all right but you forget to state that it depends of the type of game you play:

- in blitz, you don't have time to discover the ideas behind an opening you don't know and you'll fall most of the time in a trap if the other player knows the opening.

- in correspondance chess or slow game, you can build yourself a quite good theory for the situation and play quite a good opening (usually you get close to the main line if you work hard and depending of your level)

- it depends of the rating of the two players: a little mistake in the opening is not a problem for average players, but a pawn lost without compensation means 'game over' for strong players. Chess opening is very important for strong players, IM or GM prepare competition months before with teams that explore all the lines of a repertoire.

http://oldschoolchess.wordpress.com/

If I opened every game with c3 and replied to every opening with g6 I would do about as well as I do now.

I just dont agree with you all.

Well I wouldn't. Obviously an opening advantage doesn't matter if you're always losing to tactics but with most openings it's necessary sometime to memorize lines well before 2200. Get solid tactics first (before just opening principles and limited knowledge) and be able to understand the ideas behind moves. If you know a lot about the positions with 1...g6 then go for it, but it's not as reliable as other defences and sometimes black will be at an uncomfortable disadvantage if white plays right. I think this applies at 1600 and from there it gets more and more important. Petrosian could win with nearly an opening advantage alone, or draw at the worst. You should develop a pet line for black that you like because playing the right opening for you can give you good results. So it should not be completely ignored at all and in the king's indian, although I don't like to, I sometimes have to memorize some line to survive.

i think complex tactics are worthless. they never appear on real games. just simple ones.