Why Beginners Should Ditch the Opening Obsession

Why Beginners Should Ditch the Opening Obsession

As a coach with 20-plus years of experience, I’ve got a secret to share:

Beginners, stop obsessing over openings! Sure, it’s fun to memorize moves, but it’s like trying to bake a cake without knowing how to mix the ingredients properly. You need to focus on the midgame and endgame.

Here’s the breakdown of what I recommend:

20% Openings: Learn a few basics (center control, piece development, king safety) and move on. No one wins with just fancy opening moves.

50% Midgames: This is where the magic happens! You’ve got to master tactics (like forks, pins, and skewers) and learn to think strategically. If you’re not thinking ahead, you’ll get outsmarted, no matter what opening you play.

30% Endgames: Endgames = the art of not messing up when you’re ahead. If you can’t win a simple king and pawn endgame, all that midgame brilliance will be for nothing.

So, forget about memorizing endless openings — focus on tactics, strategy, and making sure you don’t blow an easy win. Trust me, your future chess self will thank you!

A quote from page 3 of The Middle Game in Chess by Reuben Fine (New York, 1952):
‘Among players of equal strength, it is always the last blunder, and the ability to see it, that determines who will win. At every level of chess skill, including the world championship class, it is still true that tactics is 99 per cent of the game.’

‘Think strategies when it’s your opponent’s turn to move; sort out the tactics while your own clock is running

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💯agree! It's nice to know some openings, especially the most critical ones that you play and the general ideas. But after that it's mostly middlegame, endgames & self confidence

Basic tactics, checkmate patterns, and fundamental endgames should be prioritized first.

GMs play bad openings for fun, and win because they're just that good. Beginners play bad openings because they don't know what's considered good, and win because their opponent also doesn't know what they're doing. A bad opening will only significantly swing the game if there is a massive gap in skill between the players. And even then, it always comes down to objective skill.

I agree strongly.

Too many beginners slow their chess development by trying to memorize opening sequences rather than learning to play chess.

So true

It's worth asking what qualifies as a beginner.

For very early beginner (starting out the gate), I'm not sure you really need to know simple pawn endgames either. The vast majority of games at this level, you're not entering the endgame a pawn up, you're entering a rook or more up if your opponent doesn't resign.

The endgame knowledge you need to know is how to promote a pawn by putting a rook behind it and how to do a ladder mate without messing up and ending with a draw condition.

When it comes to openings, you pretty much automatically end up doing openings for white by just knowing basic opening principles.

What might be helpful is knowing how to avoid scholars mate and (at a more advanced level) basic tips on dealing with or avoiding the Queen's Gambit.

Thank you for your comment! I agree that understanding the opening principles, basic tactics, checkmate patterns, and fundamental endgames should be prioritized before anything else.

Why my mom won't let me play chess: