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

Does something have to be at work at all times in order to be useful?

Is there a specific sentence where JMurakami wrote about always knowing what to do by following a plan? Is something only useful if it is always helpful?

Is something only useful if it enables one to completely avoid the necessity to think on one's own?

"... Take the opening books away and [engines] play badly in the opening. ... Perhaps they get into horrible positions or even positionally lost ones. ..." - penandpaper0089
Is it useful to a human to have help avoiding a horrible position?

I am not so sure... probably the balance thing is best, but honestly I feel like opening and middlegame “thinking” are quite the same, except that in the opening maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to study the first few moves to learn to avoid bad or get into good transpositions to keep the repertoire narrow for optimizing one’s learning and practical performance. The more concrete anchor points you have in your pattern recognition arsenal (e.g., concrete tactics and endgames; maybe some general positional/strategic principles), then that helps the calculation. For example, Karpov may only calculate 3 moves ahead, but that is because he can see long-term consequences just 3 moves ahead because he has so many concrete patterns in his arsenal. The rest of us don’t, so we have to calculate further to a more concrete anchor point that we see as beneficial (or stay in the big amateur chess haze). You can waste a lot of time studying the opening at the expense of other subjects.

A lot of good points!

I beat my first International Master in standard time by playing the French Defense, which I was quite new at. This was how it started:

4. b4!?

This was the first time I'd ever seen such a crazy opening move. And coming from a 2400-rated player, no less! I assumed it was some brilliant novelty, and was officially, at move 4, "out of book".

I held my head. I concentrated. I looked at several possible responses, and calculated them each several moves deep. Several minutes later, I played my response (...b6).

36 moves after that, my opponent resigned.

Sure, there was a lot of luck on my part (luck that my opponent made a few positional inaccuracies that led to a nice tactic; luck that I managed to avoid doing the same; luck that my opponent likely didn't try very hard after seeing my 1400 rating), but for the most part, it taught me that, while opening study can be useful, it also isn't required to play good chess.

Sure, you don't want to go into the game having absolutely no clue what to do from move one. Doing so can lead to a lot of Scholar's Mates, if one isn't careful. But why does the Scholar's Mate work? Is it because the losing player didn't study openings? Partially. But mostly it's because the losing player missed the tactic, didn't look ahead, and didn't ask himself why his opponent was developing his pieces in the way he was.

Let's say your opponent puts a knight on e2, for example. Do you think, "Which opening line is this that I've memorized?" If so, I'd argue that you're playing the opening incorrectly.

But if you look at the squares the e2 knight controls, and the possible outposts it can maneuver to, and you think, "What's my opponent planning with this move, and how can I weaken his plan, or take advantage of it?", then I'd say you're playing the opening correctly.

Do that with every single move and you're probably playing good chess, whether you're in a position you've studied or not.

"... 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)

I find it worth noting that McDonald specifically mentions "hundreds of years of trial and error". He could've said, "hundreds of years of studying", but chose not to. Wonder why?

Could it be because trying things out, making mistakes, and learning from them is a valid approach?

Maybe an approach that is a little slow? Especially for us nonAlekhines and nonKasparovs?

Also, with regard to your first question, if the chess world has not yet learned something by trial and error, where would one go to study it?

Then why don't you explain how the opening in which White won a free pawn was so relevant in this game if it led to nothing more than a lost game on move 20 and how more opening study would have somehow prevented this.

I get exactly what you're saying and understand that playing good moves gives you good positions and we should want good positions. But the fact of the matter is that if you can't hold them then what good are they? Its like being happy about the new Ferrari super car you just purchased and then proceeding to crash it on the very next block. If you can't actually drive the really nice car you just put time and resources into then you're gonna have a bad time.

If youre not getting, or able to hold a good middlegame position, then no amount of opening knowledge will correct that.  Openings are simply 1/3 of the game.  

Exactly. In fact this page is posted a lot here for people that want help with openings: http://exeterchessclub.org.uk/content/ten-rules-opening

There's a quote there by Portisch that says, "Your only task in the opening is to reach a playable middlegame." Great advice yeah? But what happens when all you do is lose those "playable" middlegames to tactics? Perhaps it's time to learn how to hold everything together in the middlegame before we look to improving the type of positions we actually reach in the opening.

In fact, if the engines have taught us anything it's that even the ugliest positions have plenty of tactical resources in them.

Don't agree with "Your only task in the opening is to reach a playable middlegame."  Those who would like to win more often and who would like to be stronger chess players will want to do better than that.

Essentially, that is the only reason for the opening.  But again, if you dont know how to play the middlegame, all your opening prep is useless.  

Middle game is generally a continuation of opening. Different openings give rise to different types of middle games. Generally, lack of opening knowledge gets exposed and exploited in the middle game.

I'm not advocating playing without a plan at all. I'm advocating playing without wasting time with opening theory. These are not the same things. In fact we are in agreement that White needed to come up with a plan on the 9th move. However I'm more than sure that this could be done without looking at an opening book prior to the game. After all, it's something you do in all parts of the game and not simply the first moves. Would it be helpful? Sure. But it isn't necessary at all for most of us.

And no, you did not explain how opening knowledge would have prevented the move 20.Nb5? in your article or how it would allow White to see 1.Qg4+ in the OP. And funnily enough, but moves could have been seen had White simply looked for checks which is the most basic thing that tactics training teaches.

A simple calculation of, "If I play 20.Nb5 does he have any forcing moves? Oh yes 20...Be3+! Then 21.Kb1 weakens the rook and... Oh no! My rook is hanging!" This is what the entire point of the thread is. In both games the openings weren't great believe me and yet both sides managed to get into a blunderful middlegame in which tactics decided the game.

Did anyone say that opening study prevents losing?

Someone did say this:

"... Take the opening books away and [engines] play badly in the opening. ... Perhaps they get into horrible positions or even positionally lost ones. ..." - penandpaper0089
Is it useful to a human to have help avoiding a horrible position?

I Understand Nothing That You Are Saying