No Openings for Beginners

being a beginner teacher and teaching my brother the vienna was a mistake. What ended up happening is that he memorized the moves and not really the plan. Luckily, he also agreed that memozing it was pointless and he switched to the scotch. and all he knew was push the d4 pawn and figure it out from there

@40

"if someone shouldn't study openings, what should they spend their time doing?"
++ Play, analysis of lost games, study of grandmaster games, endgame study

"why would spending 90% of their time of puzzles and principles, and 10% of their time on openings make them a worse chess player?"
++ It is 10% of time wasted. The studied openings lead to misunderstood middle games. If you need opening study to avoid falling into traps, then how will you avoid falling into middle game traps.

What some players don't realize is that, even when Hikaru plays intentionally poor openings, he's still drawing upon his vast opening knowledge when assessing the positions he gets, and when evaluating the responses of his opponents.

Say he plays a "Bongcloud" setup, and his opponent responds with a Semi-Tarrash structure - Hikaru is immediately considering all things he knows about the Semi-Tarrasch structure, and using that knowledge to improve his own position ...

"analysis of lost games, study of grandmaster games"

I see.

Maybe I consider  "studying openings as a beginner" as analysis of lost games and studying grandmaster games in conjunction.

You are right, endgames should be studied more.  I need to do that myself!

You are 500. I don't think you can really give advice to 1200s.

but he used big words it must be credible

^^^^ @52, 

Hold on a minute. So you're saying a 500 rated player made a mistake.  Wow.  And it was because he was trying to learn an opening that he made that mistake?  Are you suggesting he would not have made that mistake had he not tried to learn an opening?  That "winging it" on his own would have yielded a better result?

What was the opponents rating?  

Also, some here seem to advocate losing games so you can study them.  Well, this 500 did just that. Now it's bad? 

If openings are studied properly (in an instructive manner) they can improve a beginner's understanding of how to play good chess.

Especially the more traditional e4+e5 / d4+d5 openings - which do an excellent job of demonstrating opening principles in action, and the purpose behind each move. (Cause and effect, attack and defense ...)

Knowledge of opening principles is an excellent starting point. But sometimes players treat opening principles as "shortcuts" to avoid thinking at the board.

Studying specific openings can help in this regard, because opening study can illustrate that moves are made not just because they are principled - but because those moves actually do something - attack a pawn, or defend a pawn, or pin a piece, or unpin a piece ... etc, and so on.

So studying openings (properly) can actually teach one to think about the purpose behind their moves, as opposed to just lazily thinking "knights before bishops!", and then moving any knight at random ...

This seems to have gone off topic a bit. To the op:

You aren't making mistakes in theoretically known positions. People at your rating won't play theory. You are making mistakes that can be fixed by playing slower.

Look at this game:

https://www.chess.com/game/live/63944974891?username=castle_fast

Did you not see that he could take your knight when you played 7.Nf4? Did you just not care? 

What about 11.Qc7? Why give away a queen for free? Knowing the first 20 moves of the sicilian defense isn't going to prevent you from making these mistakes. Nobody at your rating will play that anyway, and even if they did, you'd still have to play chess after that and you'd still make these mistakes. Another one:

https://www.chess.com/game/live/63944382839?username=castle_fast

Why 5.Bd2? It gives up a piece for nothing. Why Nb5? Same thing.

Your mistakes aren't because of anything that learning openings would fix. Play slower, make sure your move isn't a blunder. The comments in this forum do provide valid reasons for learning openings in some form - But not at your rating. When almost all of your games are lost because you hang a piece, learning openings isn't going to help. It's far better to spend your time learning how not to make those simple mistakes.

At 500, learning anything is better than learning nothing. This thread is loaded with bad examples for why someone should not learn (or even try to learn) a few openings.  Sorry, but I can't see how your example even relates to the rest of your post.  In one breath you show a beginner loses a game due to not knowing how to start the game.  Then you actually advocate knowing a little about the moves,  and so on.  Yea, had he known a little more it might have helped. But holy smokes at 500, what are we to expect?  

Lol, Pogchamps doesn't count as a "student".  Pogchamps doesn't even count as chess...it's sensationalistic garbage and celebrity culture overload.  Danya has *actual* students, that he is *actually* training.  Pogchamps is a lesson in what *not* to do when training chess players.

Try again.  "Student"...lol.

Ok, what did I miss?  He is instructing a player at the 800 range is he not?  He does this over the course of many sessions... : shrug:  

He has a short and arbitrary time limit to make his "student" win (and then his student is free to brain dump everything he's been taught), does he not?  Do you have some illusion that this is how Naroditsky would train by default?  

Pogchamps is a circus act.  Step right up and laugh and cry at the plight of the unprepared.

I"d say "never heard of it", but I've seen ads for it here.  Had (and still have) no idea what it's purpose is or what it's about.  Afaiwc, it was just someone taking lessons from a streamer.  Btdt, even at $250/hr.  So it's not unheard of... 

I think a lot of this debate stems from what people mean by "studying openings".

Half think it means one thing and the other half something else.

Hence, it is a great debate.

Curious as to what the OP thinks after all the comments?

Like with everything, really. If you play a game of chess, you go through an opening. When you analyze your game, realize that you got into an uncomfortable situation early on, find the reason and then make a mental note on a different move to play next time around, you are already doing opening preparation.