Does anyone NOT study openings?

You probably could get to 1800 on tactics and endgame alone, but to ignore or not understand everything else is missing alot in chess, because only going for kingside attacks is just shallow, and one day that player will hit a brick wall and can't get passed the 1800 hump. If you're more balanced you're less likely to run into plateus as the weaknesses are what can really drag you down.

Amen.

Well, I think he just had a strong intuitive feel for them. He typically played the best moves in any position. And he beat most of the top players of his era without needing to have much book knowledge. Apparently, he didn't study opening theory much.

"Apparently"

According to who? Himself right?

You spelt it wrong...

Well, I believe both he and his fellow players made comments at various times about this issue. His laziness was well known, but then he could afford to be lazy until his younger opponents started booking-up.

I wasn't correcting you. I was quoting you. I did spell it wrong, whoopsie.

It's much more fun to play a completely unorthodox game with no vein of theory in the opening, and studying them can be a pain, but I do think it's good to be aware of the many opening traps.

Some fun games I play are the Chess960 games here. Your pieces start in random order so there is no "opening book".

Yup.

Wasn't Fischer Random Chess created precisely because Fischer felt chess was being suffocated by over-importance of opening theory? As in, without extensive opening knowledge you end up getting screwed over pretty quickly. To steal a wikipedia quote from him, "Some kid of fourteen today, or even younger, could get an opening advantage against Capablanca." Although given what's been said about Capablanca in this thread, maybe it's not a good benchmark.

I like that: "opening odds". Since chess has three parts (opening, middle and endgame), why give your opponent the advantage after one phase of the game is complete? Perhaps some people don't "study"  openings, but have developed an opening repertoire through play.

Example: I get beat everytime in OTB by one friend who does not study openings, but will play 1...c5 sometimes and not know the name of the opening, nor does he care to know!

I asked him where he learned 1...c5. He told me that a while back he often played a co-worker who was rated 2100+ (working on the master rating) in tournament play. The tournament player mentioned that 1...c5 was a good move.

"If you want to play chess competively, you must develop an opening repertoire. That is, you must learn a set of specific opening sequences that allow you to reach a playable middlegame no matter how your opponent plays in the opening." -  International Grandmaster Patrick Wolff (Winner of Two U.S. Championships)

It's silly to say Capa didn't study openings.  Obviously he became an expert in the openings that Lasker liked to play.

i don't study openings.

I do not "study" openings in the sense that I am trying to learn all possible continuations by heart (that won't work anyway. White has 20 different opening moves to choose from, black has 20 different answers - that means 400 possible positions just after each player has made his/her first move! And then after the second move... Well, you do the math from there.)

On the other hand, I like at least to know the names of some of the openings. I think it adds a certain flair and colour to playing chess - not least because the openings have such exotic and wonderful names - the Old Indian! The Kieseritzky gambit! The accellerated dragon! And so forth.

Furthermore, some opening knowledge will enable you to increase your speed during the opening phase - an important skill when playing blitz - and to avoid some common mistakes.

For instance, I (playing white) have won at least three blitz games online after 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nxe5 Nxe4 4. Qe2 Nf6 5. Nc6+ and the queen is dead. If you play the Petrov, you should at least know that trap!

People study openings because

1) It's easy -- just memorize, no understanding required

2) It gives them the chance to play at world level for a few moves at least

3) By following the fashions of the top GMs, they can feel part of their world and can make a little bit of sense of the opening battles between top players (why would player X play that opening against Y?)

4) Every now and then, if they play really weak opponents, they'll win by an opening trap

5) They think their other results will improve for some bizarre reason

So study them if you like to because of 1-3, perhaps 4, but not because of reason 5.

Because your results depend on how well you play after the opening.

If you find the esoteric names and the ECO codes of openings offputting, you may like to consider CLIPCLOP - one of the modern alternatives.

For beginners, studying openings does not have much practical value (beyond maybe learning a few traps) because neither they nor their opponents possess the level of skills that is required to exploit a positional advantage or a tactical initiative obtained from the opening with any efficiency. But that is true for beginners.

I do not study openings off the book.

Experience matters.

Sometimes I know the opening but flunk the whole game. I mean, I do not blame the opening.

Maybe I have to change my playing style.

I don't, but I should. 

Even for a beginner, knowing some opening variations should at least save clock time, and create an impression that they know what they are doing. Imagine sitting at the board and trying to 'figure out for yourself' what to do on move 1.