Short of expert level (2000+), you can probably play pretty much any opening, as long as it's not unsound, and be fine. .
Yes, and here lies the devil in the detail again. »as long as it's not unsound« you wrote. And how to decide if it's sound or unsound? Only by knowing opening theory .
@Spielkalb, principles and theory definitely seem similar, but theory is about specific lines and variations.
Principles are more generic, and mostly about learning how to properly develop, rather than about learning correct lines.
An example of learning opening principles would be:
"Which of the following is a better first move for white?"
or
And then:
"Which is a better second move for white?"
or
Etc... These are examples of opening principles (developing toward the center, attacking or defending central pawns, stuff like that...).
Principles and theory do overlap, but principles are less about learning correct variations, and more about learning the fundamentals of opening play.
Without properly learning opening principles, beginners might play like this, and not understand what they're doing wrong:
That's interesting...
Short of expert level (2000+), you can probably play pretty much any opening, as long as it's not unsound, and be fine. Most games are not going to be won or lost based on your opening choices, but on mistakes in other parts of the game.
The opening certainly influences the types of games you get and some openings may be easier to get/maintain an advantage though.
Well understood, thank you.
Short of expert level (2000+), you can probably play pretty much any opening, as long as it's not unsound, and be fine. .
Yes, and here lies the devil in the detail again. »as long as it's not unsound« you wrote. And how to decide if it's sound or unsound? Only by knowing opening theory .
Very few openings are unsound at the level of most players, but ones that don't follow at least some opening principles likely are 
The conventional wisdom is that it doesn't matter at lower ratings if you know theory, but GM Naroditsky, an excellent chess teacher, strongly disagrees. He argues that knowing at least some theory can help players at any level perform better.
Think about it. What is chess theory? Essentially, it's not just a series of memorized opening moves, but also each opening comes with a set of plans. Without an opening, you're essentially making it up as you go along. Also, if you study a little theory, it helps you understand why some kinds of moves are good and some kinds of moves are bad. It's not just rote memorization. Knowing more theory than your opponent is always an advantage, regardless of level.
All you need as a beginner are three openings: one for white, one for black against e4, and one for black against d4. Learning the basics won't take you super long and will help sharpen and focus your play.
This is not to say that you should become obsessed with opening theory, just that you shouldn't completely ignore it.
@Stil1, it doesn't make sense to me to exclude opening principles from opening theory. In your understanding opening theory would mean to remembering lines in a specific opening.
In the same mindset you could say Keppler's laws are not theory, only principles. Theory would be only the calculation of Jupiter's moons around it and the sun. No no.
A theory is defined by its principles. Those are the constituents from which you can go further. You can only understand those principles in applying them to examples. If you re-define the meaning of theory in terms of chess, you can do that. But it still seems weird to me.
The conventional wisdom is that it doesn't matter at lower ratings if you know theory, but GM Naroditsky, an excellent chess teacher, strongly disagrees. He argues that knowing at least some theory can help players at any level perform better.
[…]
This is not to say that you should become obsessed with opening theory, just that you shouldn't completely ignore it.
Exactly! Even to know what "the centre" on the chessboard is, is part of the theory. And without knowing that, you're quite lost.
I'd say it depends entirely on one's level. "Beginner" is a broad term that can include players who are still learning what the pieces are called, and still trying to correctly remember how they move.
Asking such a player to learn opening theory would be kind of ridiculous.
It would be like telling a beginner guitarist: "This is a guitar. There are six strings on it. Now we're going to learn a simple chord progression: G major, C major, D major. Notice how I do it."
The beginner would be like, "WTF?"
Better would be to hand the beginner the guitar, and teach them the names of the strings, and let them practice thumb-picking each open string.
At some point, they can begin learning how to pinch a string on a fret ...
Likewise, with a beginning chess player, they should not be taught opening theory. They should be learning how a knight moves, then having them practice that letter L shape, across the squares ... with no other pieces or pawns on the board, yet ...
Or, if they're past that point, finding simple things, like: "What is a good move for white, here?"
To me, that's "beginner" learning. It would be pointless to teach such a player the first 6 moves of the Queen's Gambit Declined, Orthodox Variation, for example.
They'd be feeling lost and completely overwhelmed.
I saw this in "POG Champs", when they were trying to teach the London System to relative beginners. The coaches were like, "This would be a bad move, because of the bishop pin, see?"
And the streamers were looking dumbfounded, saying things like, "What the heck is a PIN?! Haha! I keep forgetting that the knight can jump over pieces ..."
Within this community it is often heard by GMs, IMs and such Don't waste your time with openings, train tactics! That's a little lame advice because you need strategy to come into a position in which tactics can evolve.
@RAU4orever wrote: »Does studying theory matter? No, not really. If you play using sound opening principles, you can pretty much get through any opening fine. «
Without studying theory you can't possibly know what those "sound opening principles" are.
But this is absolutely wrong. The general opening principles are very well known. They are: get control over the center (white wants to get the e4 and d4 pawn center, black wants to prevent white from getting this), develop your pieces as actively as possible (move them only once) and get your king safe. In all conventional openings you'll find that lines follow these principles. Sure, you might be able to find an exception. There are tons of exceptions in chess after all. They get nice and important when you're getting strong, but these exceptions don't really matter when you're lower rated. Because the normal move will get you to a normal and playable position. Strong players don't do fancy things the first few moves.
In most lines opening theory only starts at say move 10. At move 15 or later the GM ideas come into play. But by then we're already in the (early) middlegame. In my view, one needs to study middlegame strategy extensively alongside tactics. Then you can just come up with your own natural moves to play and understand why you're playing them. Theory might prefer an unnatural move, but that is usually because the natural move doesn't give you an advantage against perfect play. But unnatural moves are hard to understand. Especially without good general knowledge of chess they are hard to understand for lower rated players. You can play a knight to the rim because it's theory, but if you don't understand the idea of the move you'll just have a knight on the rim when you don't know how to respond to your opponent's move that wasn't theory. And that's what happens all the time.
To me, that's "beginner" learning. It would be pointless to teach such a player the first five moves of the Queen's Gambit Declined, Orthodox Variation, for example.
They'd be feeling lost and completely overwhelmed.
Of course I agree with that. But here we come to our misunderstanding what "opening theory" means.
If you've taught a beginner the movement of the pieces and the basic checkmates K+Q, 2R+K you would like to teach them how to start a game. Why is 1.e4 preferable to 1.a4 or such? In my understanding, this already counts as "opening theory".
To stay with your analogy, of course I'd show a beginner on the guitar how to play a A-Minor and C-Mayor chord.
@Stil1, it doesn't make sense to me to exclude opening principles from opening theory. In your understanding opening theory would mean to remembering lines in a specific opening.
In the same mindset you could say Keppler's laws are not theory, only principles. Theory would be only the calculation of Jupiter's moons around it and the sun. No no.
A theory is defined by its principles. Those are the constituents from which you can go further. You can only understand those principles in applying them to examples. If you re-define the meaning of theory in terms of chess, you can do that. But it still seems weird to me.
I'm not exactly sure what you're arguing here. (Your comparison to Kepler's laws and Jupiter's moons went above my head.)
But opening "principles" and opening "theory" are rather specific, in terms of meaning.
An opening principle would be to develop your king knight toward the center of the board (to f3, for example), as it would control more squares, from f3, than it would from the h3 square.
Thus, placing the knight on f3 would be a principled developing move. Playing on principle. "A knight on the rim is dim," the player might think.
Theory would be line-specific. "We place the pawn on ...a6 here, in the Sicilian Najdorf, because of the following continuation: (insert variation here) ... notice, also, how it's useful for black to guard the b5 square, to support an eventual ...b5 pawn thrust, and to stop white's potential Nb5 ideas ..."
The a6 pawn move, therefore, is a theoretical move ... one that has been discovered from analysis, and understanding of future variations.
If black were, instead, to play a move like ...Nc6, because "I want to develop my knight toward the center, where it controls the most squares!", then they would be playing on principle, instead ...
You know what you get when you just focus on principles? You get a scholastic tournament where 19 or 20 boards are playing there Four Knights. All the kids get bored thinking that chess is always the same and kids start quitting in droves out of sheer boredom.
You don't have to be too advanced to learn the Caro Kann, for example. The basic ideas are relatively easy to grasp, and it comes with a very simple plan. If you're rated 300-400 you should be able to pick it up easily, it's very solid, and opponents are quite likely to have no idea what to do next. You've spent a couple of days studying a simple opening, and you're already a step up on most of the people you face.
Or say you spend a few days learning the Danish. You give up a pawn or two, but look at those bishops on the queenside staring at the king. It's a great way to teach a beginner about the importance of tactics and how to attack. It also teaches the importance of initiative as opposed to a simple count of pieces, and it introduces an element of fun and excitement.
Nobody is talking about teaching someone with a 500 rating the Sicialian Najdorf Zabreb Fianchetto variation, but simple openings with simple plans are a perfectly reasonable alternative to just following opening principles. Following opening principles should be your default when you don't know how to proceed and don't have a plan.
The conventional wisdom is that it doesn't matter at lower ratings if you know theory, but GM Naroditsky, an excellent chess teacher, strongly disagrees. He argues that knowing at least some theory can help players at any level perform better.
[…]
This is not to say that you should become obsessed with opening theory, just that you shouldn't completely ignore it.
Exactly! Even to know what "the centre" on the chessboard is, is part of the theory. And without knowing that, you're quite lost.
Here's a game of mine that I posted in another topic. I don't study a ton of openings or theory and while I know some, it wasn't the opening that won/lost the game:
and from that same topic a lower rated player where the opening wasn't the deciding factor (while there is an early mistake, it wasn't something that had a game impact; the ratings of the players and latter parts of the game were most important)
At the lower ratings, the number of transitions in most longer games, where a player isn't completely lost by an early blunder, will be fairly high. Working your way up in ratings, you'll have less transitions and more games with slowly increasing advantages/disadvantages. As ratings increase, the amount of "theory" needed may follow but likely isn't the biggest predictor of results.
Basic theory (central control, development, castling) are more important and not outright blundering material. Having some standard openings you play, and learning some of the ideas in those openings is good. Getting to a playable middlegame with no major weaknesses can be important and the scale of that importance increases the farther up the rating ladder you climb.
Unless a player has a phenomenal memory, most players and games will be out of any theory or previous games withing 6 or 7 moves. At higher levels, that will increase, of course.
@Martin_Stahl - there is a hole in your logic. Of course the main reason why beginner players lose is because they hang pieces... everyone knows this.
You are implying that learning a little opening theory and following opening principles are somehow mutually exclusive. You're also implying, incorrectly, that learning a little theory will somehow adversely affect your ability to not make errors. Learning a little bit of theory is not hard. Learning how to not hang pieces or succumb to simple tactics is a *long-term* process that takes much, much, much longer to master. Saying that there's a 1 to 1 tradeoff in time between learning simple openings and solving your larger problems is just plain incorrect.
As I've said before, knowing theory is better than not knowing theory. It's as simple as that.
How can looking into the first few moves of your past games not be usefull at almost any level?
At my level I run into 1. d4 e5 quite a lot. It ruined my plans from the first move on and I lost about 50% of the games. Then I spend a few days watching video's and testing. Now I win 75%.
That is not learning opening principles, it is low level theory I'd say. That starts from the moment a beginner runs into scholars mate for the second time.
@AtaChess68 - So true. Also, if you follow opening principles and someone hits you with the Wayward Queen, you're probably dead. The best way to beat such an opening is to memorize the refutation. Knowing the theory is vital if you're to survive trappy openings.
I am probably not worthy of talking, but I believe that you must know how the pieces move, then what checkmate and stalemate is, you should then learn why
1. e4 is good and how it controls the center. You should learn the first few moves of the ruy Lopez or 4 knights. If someone does lets say, the 4 move checkmate on you, then learn how to defend it. Once you are more advanced, start learning an opening that interests you, but probably not something like all variations of the Sicilian
@Spielkalb, principles and theory definitely seem similar, but theory is about specific lines and variations.
Principles are more generic, and mostly about learning how to properly develop, rather than about learning correct lines.
An example of learning opening principles would be:
"Which of the following is a better first move for white?"
or
And then:
"Which is a better second move for white?"
or
Etc... These are examples of opening principles (developing toward the center, attacking or defending central pawns, stuff like that...).
Principles and theory do overlap, but principles are less about learning correct variations, and more about learning the fundamentals of opening play.
Without properly learning opening principles, beginners might play like this, and not understand what they're doing wrong: