Why do you study chess openings?

I clarify, I tried to use chesscom forum as a source to crarify some openinng questions. However, I noticed, that people who ask and especially who give advice more often have low ratings. Even lower than mine ( 2055 in Rapid, although I didn't play here a lot and seriously).

I see that some 1700 for some reasons know some nuances in openings, but it is clear that this knowledge doesn't help them to increase, most of them keep playing after they asked and never improve.

On the other side, people who understand the game in general, achieve results much better.

I've read in numerous books (Kotov's, Chechov's "Programmes to prepare Candidate Masters", or even in Ramesh's "Fundamental Thinking" that it doesn't make to study openings deep unless you are a professional. 

So, do you study openings with the hope to improve or you are just interested in openings? If the former, I used to be like that, but if you spend your time only on openings, you most likely cannot convert your opening advantage, or bad at endgames. Actually, whenever I played against strong players OTB, almost never did I lose because of openings. On the contrary, they tend to avoid theoretical lines, and prefer to keep the tension or go straight to the ending with a small edge, but which is enough to win.

Or do you think that sometimes you will solve ALL opening issues, have a stable repertorie without any holes and then start mastering other areas? It'll never happen

I think the reason to study opening is so that you don't get trapped. I don't really get into openings through, I only have a bit of knowledge in openings. But by knowing a bit of it I'm able to create my own tactic to gain advantages. I played a game OTB with a player who is probably quite strong, I think one of the games went like this or something that leads to that position

It's placebo effect. Openings are the "scam" of the chess world.

Anyone with any talent can tell you that the difference between getting a "+0.7" advantage out of the opening and only getting "0.0" is almost entirely unnoticeable until you reach a certain level... say.... 1600, ESPECIALLY when compared to the difference between knowing how to play simple endgames and not knowing simple endgames or knowing basic middlegame tactics and not knowing middlegame tactics.

Anybody new looks at that "+0.7" advantage and sees a bigger number attached to a flashy title with grandmaster representation and dozens of people's recommendations and incorrectly assumes that OBVIOUSLY this must be the most important part of the game, especially when compared to drilling boring, repetitive tasks like KP v K opposition draws and wins or checkmating with KR v K or deeply analyzing grandmaster games (and one's own games) to understand all of the middlegame plans, ideas, and tactics and the reasons behind them.

It's quite simple really. "All I have to do is memorize 5 moves and play them at the start of every game and I'll be winning?" and suddenly a 450 who doesn't know how to ladder mate is a "King's Indian player" or a "Najdorf player" and reasons that all of their failures can be solved by simply getting a better opening and that their successes can be attributed to their skill in the game when in reality their failures can be attributed to their lack of skill and knowledge of how chess functions and their success can only be attributed to their opponents' equally poor chess skill.

I think you are looking at the situation under a false lens.

Or to put it simply, your looks at the situation wrong.

Let me ask you a question:

What does it take to be a Master Chess player?

A Chess Game is broken down into 3 parts:

- Opening

- Middle

- Endgame

Do you think you can be Master Chess player by only Studying Endgames?

Or Do you think you can be Master Chess player by only Studying Openings?

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Most Title players I have talked to have told me in order to be a Master Chess player you need to Study/Master All Phases of the Game.

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So to be the best you have to Master everything.

However, it’s not possible to Master everything at once.

There is only so much time in a single day for a person to Study.

So what Study method do you do?

Everyone answers that question differently!

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Some people start by trying to Master Openings. Than continue to Middle - Endgame in sequence

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Some people start by Mastering Endgames.

Then continue by going backwards.

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Some people try to study a Little of Each.

Then continue till they Master all gradually.

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At the end of the day, The goal is still the same!

Right? The Method can change, but we all just want to get better.

Rating gives a false sense of uniformity to everything. Someone might be great at theory but constantly lose when tactical problems come up.

On the other hand you could have someone that never gets anything out of the opening, but complicates everything and can calculate their way out of any bad position they fall into.

People are all very different at strengths and weaknesses in their game and it's a bit high and mighty for you to come in talking about how people rated below you know a lot about opening as if that were some bad thing or they're misguided.

I think it is much more important to learn general opening principles than to study specific sequences of opening moves. With a strong foundation in general principles, a player should be able to face a new opening and figure out how to get a playable position.

when I was starting to play in OTB tournaments, I often tried a new move. At classical time controls, there was time to figure out how to develop the pieces so they worked together. And after the game, I could check the opening books to see how well I did. This was a very effective way to learn.

Some of my favorite wins came when I tried something new in the opening.

I think the reason for this is that many people are blinded by the endless number of opening books. The number of middlegame and endgame books, on the other hand, is negligible.

It is of course much easier for the authors to write an opening book. A quick search of the database for new a novelty and a quick run of the engine. And then another new course can be sold.

A book like Dvoretsky's endgame manual is not easy to write.

I suspect that everyone's answer will be different. My position is that I am now a 1700-1850 player because I am over 50 and returning to chess after a 25 year layoff, but used to be 2000. When I study openings, I am looking for the strategy underlying them so I can better understand the resulting middlegame positions but am also to an extent looking for how, by learning some concrete moves the good human responses to which are counter-intuitive, I might earn a few cheap victories. The latter is slightly different from the motivation of sort of chucklehead who plays the Englund because it has a few traps (for clarity, I do not believe that everyone who plays the Englund is that sort of twerp): I am not interested in lines which will leave me usually worse if my opponent "doesn't fall for it". I also have an eye to my own middlegame strengths and weaknesses and look for position types which I can actually play. For example, when I returned to chess I investigated the Alapin against the Sicilian only to discover that some particular lines (and I'll not say which for I do not want to to give my potential opponents an easy ride) in that opening led to a specific type of middlegame which I play execrably badly. So I play something else now. But there is also an element of "just being interested in openings" for me, plus being fascinated with the aesthetics of some openings which I cannot play well for toffee. I find both the Allgaier Gambit and the Grob aesthetically attractive and love seeing the theory of them (the latter because I am also a fan of how the late great Michael Basman approached the middlegame) but all that study is "merely" to see the beauty. To paraphrase Botvinnik, "Chess is the art of making logic beautiful". I have a ludicrously high loss rate when I try to play such things. It's complicated.

I study openings because I believe you start playing chess on move 1.

Every phase of the game is the same process - you're trying to find good moves to play that will strengthen your position, or weaken your opponent's.

I don't really study "theory", though. I study opening ideas and try to understand why they work, or why they don't. In the Nimzo-Indian, for example, why is it fine to exchange away the b4 bishop if White's knights are on f3 and d2 ... but less desirable to exchange it away if White's knights are on c3 and e2? It's a subtle nuance that takes a lot of analyzing to understand ...

Why does an early ...h6 work in some lines of the Najdorf, reducing Black's complications, while in other lines, an early ...h6 is slow for Black and gives him practical difficulties? Another thing to analyze to try to understand ...

Chess can get real complicated, and I study openings to try to reduce some of these early complications, through my own feeble attempts at understanding ...