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

Is anybody here advocating that an amateur spend all his time on keeping up on all Najdorf theories?

@JMurakami

Thanks for sharing and annotating your game! It is very instructive, The early decision of not playing c4 helps build the robust black center pawn chain and white has no counter play whatsoever.

Beautiful long chains and connected pawns.

I like such play.

Of course, white made many mistakes.

When i first learned the moves i was taught simple endgames such as K and Q vs K and also K and R vs K.

Also learned simple opening theory such as the 1. e4 opening and why to play such a move and how to follow up on such a move.

Opening theory--simple opening theory is a must--even for a player who has just learned the moves.

"On top of that, thousands of people crying out loud: "Don't play with a plan, don't be an idiot (!) just practice tactics all day long!" And we get why +98%, out of the 600 million people playing chess, don't master the game." (direct quote from above).

90 percent of players in the rating distribution have limited knowledge of both tactics and endgames, while the upper 10 percent of the ratings distribution play roughly 10 TIMES the number of rated games, compared to the bottom 90 percent.

Everyone needs some kind of "opening repertoire," whether narrow (like the Modern or the Hippo) or wide-ranging (say beginning with 1e4, or 1d4) and therefore chockablock with transpositions to other openings.  It's entirely a personal choice.

Unfortunately, Chess players below USCF A Class waste inordinate amounts of money collecting opening books, and poorly paid Chess Masters (and above) sell lots of Opening Books to the former.  This we all know.

We endlessly debate the Nature, and Meaning, and Artistry, of various openings in these forum threads.  Then we wait a couple weeks and start the whole process over again??

Such discussions read mostly like chasing our tails, unfortunately.  

David Taylor (former US Correspondence Champion) sums it up best (as per post #712 above) --

"Opening theory--simple opening theory is a must--even for a player who has just learned the moves."

I caught my tail, at last.

Or:

yeah, but you know to fianchetto.

Good comments, but 23. Rf7 Kf7 24. Qh7 gives white at least a draw, more probably good winning chances.

Yeah, saw that after reviewing the game. That was from me making an inaccurate middle-game move (21...g6) instead of ...h6. A nice little learning opportunity from the game.

In the opening, 4. d5 seems to be the best move, and white gets large advantage.

"... Take the opening books away and [engines] play badly in the opening. ... Perhaps they get into horrible positions or even positionally lost ones. ..." - penandpaper0089
Did penandpaper0089 ever address the question of whether or not that sort of thing happens for humans, too?

21...g6 was not that bad, although h6 might have been better.

22...Bc4 was the inaccurate move, instead 22...Rc7, to challenge the white rook

on the 7th rank, should be preferable.

But that does not matter a lot, since you won.

This. I know that in my best games, knowledge hasn’t really come into play. I just kept obtaining stuff and hitting my opponent over the head with it, and that proved to be enough to beat almost any non-master.

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. ..."

You make a good point. ...h6 was better, and ...Rc7 was certainly better to stop the Rxf7 tactic.

Though, yes—it doesn't truly matter, because we're talking about a middle-game blunder there. The topic of this thread is the opening, which, in this case, was finished by move 10.

@JMurakami

Thanks for the clarifications on post #711. Your comments are insightful and helpful.

Good finish to this discussion.  Thanks to all.