Chess strength vs opening

I've sometimes thought about opening (in an OTB tournament game) with 1.a3 just to make my opponent think from move 1.

How much would you predict openings matter at the sub-master level?  I.e. take 50 players U2000 and have them play a few tourneys.  First with their favorite lines, then with only obscure (but not unsound) openings like 1.a3.  Would it show in the win/loss/draw statistics and how much of a role (positive or negative) would psychology play?

Playing " book openings " helps greatly to avoid time trouble. If we all had to really think from move 1 I think time trouble would be a problem for everyone. 

Interesting Reb.

In your tournament games around what move do you usually slow down and start thinking hard?  I guess it might depend on when your opponent decides to throw out a novelty or an obscure line... but for titled players you guys probably get to move 10 regularly without too much thought and just a few minutes off your clock right?

In most of my games we reach move 10 very quickly. I try to conserve the bulk of my time for the middlegames but ofcourse not all of my opponents do the same thing. I am referring to OTB tournament games. 

In my experience, if I make a GM or an IM start thinking in the opening phase it means I have screwed up and will soon be forced to resign. It might be good to drag a weaker player out of "book" early on but I think its suicidal to do this with a much stronger player..... 

I agree with Reb and Estragon. In my experience OTB players who insist on deviating from normal book lines all the time rarely make it class-A (1800 USCF) and I believe anyone who wants to keep on improving has to "book up" sooner or later. Maybe Wafflemaster should organize the tnmts he proposed and see what happens. My own gut feeling is that players will mostly play at their current strength in the long run regardless of the opening, since everyone will also be forced to play the same dud opening in the "obscure" opening tnmt.

Hmm, then maybe it is just a chess maturity issue.  If a player wants to keep improving, gimmicky trash openings aren't any good.

@ Reb, I've had the same sort of experience... when a much stronger player suddenly starts taking a lot of time in my games it's usually because they smell a win and are re-checking their calculations heh.  A very bad sign :)

I play a strong expert weekly in G/60 conditions and I've found typically that when he takes a long think that he's trying to calculate the winning tactic. Last week, however, I had a 20 minute advantage by move 10 because we both broke theory and I had a slightly better plan than he did at that point in time.

I wouldn't dream of playing anything out of book(until I forget the lines) or off-beat because the few times I've tried, I've been summarily punished after 10 minutes of calculation. This one was different because we had a very weird closed Ruy Lopez and I wound up with 2 extremely active knights.

Moral of the story: I aim for positions I understand within my lesser opening knowledge and do everything I can not to play passively. It works pretty well against opposition ~1000 points stronger than me (2 draws and a loss in my last 3 games OTB).