Opening Theory Is Pointless For Most People That Will Ever Play. Why Bother?

"... For beginning players, [Discovering Chess Openings] will offer an opportunity to start out on the right foot and really get a feel for what is happening on the board. ..." - FM Carsten Hansen (2006)

"... A remark like 'games are rarely decided in the opening' does not really do justice to the issue. ... even if an initial opening advantage gets spoiled by subsequent mistakes, this doesn't render it meaningless. In the long run, having the advantage out of the opening will bring you better results. Maybe this warning against the study of openings especially focuses on 'merely learning moves'. But almost all opening books and DVD's give ample attention to general plans and developing schemes, typical tactics, whole games, and so on. ..." - IM Willy Hendriks (2012)

Is anyone advocating the negect of tactics?

What percentage of low rated players do you know?

"... In the middlegame and especially the endgame you can get a long way through relying on general principles and the calculation of variations; in the opening you can go very wrong very quickly if you don't know what ideas have worked and what haven't in the past. It has taken hundreds of years of trial and error by great minds like Alekhine and, in our day, Kasparov to reach our current knowledge of the openings. ..." - GM Neil McDonald (2001)

You "prove" something by declaring, "I bet ..."?

"It is important for club players to build up a suitable opening repertoire." - GM Artur Yusupov (2010)

Is proof possible on this sort of issue?

Why not simply tell such players to do more work on tactics?

Can results be improved by improving one's ability to avoid going "very wrong very quickly"?

it is perhaps worthwhile to think of the 1974 words of Paul Keres:
".... How should you open a chess game? There is no one correct method, no single course which all students must follow. ..."

Do you think it is equally easy for everyone to become a "tactical beast"? Aren't there a good many who have not been a "talented junior"?

Does higher-rating necessarily mean better-at-advising-others?

Danny, it's amazing how quickly tactics get involved in chess. 

The first move may be driven by abstract considerations, but it quickly becomes tactical, even on move 2 in some cases! Remember, the fastest checkmate possible is a two-mover, and there are many ways to lose in the first five moves. Almost none of those are covered in any depth by "theory" because most masters already know that stuff!

Yes, exactly. It must also be noted that the blunders in class player games tend to happen after one or two serious mistakes have already been made, and they often don't look that much like a tactics problem.

Everyone knows how to get to the 8-9 move mark and think's they're doing well, but they're getting close to 20 moves. After that time you're in the middle game, which means that everything is different for the next few moves, since there are so many possible moves. Which means you can't study for it. So I don't think that studying moves pays off. Doing well in the middle game is best, I guess.  

I'm guessing you haven't really been following the likes of Magnus Carlsen. He shows that quite often, even strong GMs can get into lost positions by move 9 or 10! There's still a tremendous amount of chess that hasn't been explored, and there are many, many traps that will sting the sleepy chess player. 

The reason why the claim that <<Opening Theory Is Pointless For Most People That Will Ever Play>> is silly and incorrect is that many people who have ever played chess consider that it would be OK if they could maybe play a bit better. Given that an average player wants to improve, then studying tactics is only studying part of the game and not the whole. Typical tactical situations arise from stereotypical openings and it helps if we can recognise which openings tend to lead to which types of game. Some games are more open, perhaps with more tactics that tend to burn out and resolve themselves relatively early, whereas other types of game tend to be more lastingly complex or relatively simple, all the way through. There's a myriad of differences, which can be most readily understood by looking at chess from the p.o.v. of the transposition from typical opening patterns to typical middle-game patterns and beyond.

There's no real need to give concrete examples since a player with some kind of intellectual ability and chess knowledge will work this out and will understand what is meant, whereas a player without such ability probably wouldn't be able to use such examples profitably. However, just compare typical situations arising from the London System and the Moller Attack or the Max Lange. Then tell me that the player who steers the opening through quiet channels in order to surprise his opponent with tactics doesn't know what he's doing and isn't playing according to an opening system.

This O.P. is fundamentally dishonest and is thus provocative only. Nothing wrong with that, provided it's realised that this is a sort of "troll" thread, created, wittingly or unwittingly, in order to get people thinking about the fundamentals of chess.