Does studying GM games really help?

Oh and I read "My System", which I rated pretty highly. But I wasn't classing that among the "old books" because that was the begining of the counter-reaction.

I think studying GM games helps me a lot actually.

Anyone that tries to learn a new opening, especially one that next to nobody plays (in my case 1.b4 - amazing opening btw!), will see that it is almost impossible without looking into professional games. 

Yes, often you can be learning by doing, but this means often that you will unknowingly train inaccurate or even wrong moves.

If you look through GM games, the best way of learning is to learn every move by hearth and being able to repeat them in parrot fashion. It is not necessairy to understand every move perfectly, often one must accept that this certain move IS the best. In some books it is not told, why those moves are the best, but in the end it comes down to certain variations that could happen, which are in comparison worse.

1. b4 .... I've had a lot of practice against that because a player from our local club was using it. I favour 1 b4 ... e5 2 Bb2 f6.

The correct way for white to continue involves e4 and f4 but the pratitioners of this opening don't tend to know that.

I remember studying a Kamsky game once. Be mated his opponent with 2 rooks and a knight.

The next day, I was playing a much stronger player. I was ahead on material, with just seconds on my clock. He tried that very same mate against me. I immediatly moved my rook to prevent it, and offered a draw, which my opponent accepted.

If I hadn't seen that game, I no doubt would have lost.

Yes

pick your favorite players in terms of style and study their games

try and stick to Kasparov before kasparov players because thet arent all "i played this move because the computer said i get equality" because unless youre playing for $, opening prep is a waste of time.

I used to play for $, or should Isay, £. I lost my sharpness and started losing in the last rounds due to tiredness. Opening prep was good.

The first chess book I read was Bobby Fischer's biography by Frank Brady.  I played through those games many times over and it helped me tremendously in developing an opening repertoire and tactics.

*cough* Bobby Fischer *cough*

Fischer taught himself chess. How? By going over Master games in books. He read every chess book he could get his hands on. Taught himself Russian so he could read their books. They say he could quickly leaf through chess books and just "see" how the masters moved to arrive at the illustrated position. All from reading chess books and going over and over Master games from day one in his chess study.

Looking at master games just makes me scratch my head in confusion. Of course if I read a book and the author explains the moves I can understand and learn from it but otherwise I am clueless. 

This is probably why chess is not more popular in the media. It's very hard to understand what is going on especially if the commentary is poor. Usually the casters are very stong players and they do not bother to explain simple stuff for the average Joe. 

There is a school of thought that believes just running through the games without complete understanding is of benefit. Your brain sees and remembers move paterns....

An excellent point. I enjoy playing through Mater games, and while I don't pretend to understand all the moves or the thought behind them, it is fun to see the pure beauty of many of these games. I don't always understand a piece of art work, but that doesn't detract from the overall beauty of the piece or my enjoyment of it. :)

Which school would this be ? I certainly never heard of it. 

I have actually seen this recommended a lot in Go. Playing through pro games is often encouraged to get a sense for the flow of the game. Different game, but I imagine there are similar principles involved...

I used to study Gm games with a friend, much higher rated than me. I would often learn things from him durting these sessions, almost completely on accident. Some statement he would throw out offhand, that I was ready to learn.

If he tried to teach he something directly, I often wasn't ready. And it would go over my head. But it was these "accidental" things that I often absorbed.

No! 

He's Martain. Like Bigfoot.

The whole concept that an amateur cannot learn from studying masters seems incredibly patronizing. I became an expert guitarist by learning the basics techniques and then learning to play songs written by people like Clapton, among others. You can absolutely ape talent to assimilate it, infact in many skill-based pursuits this is your finest option. Granted this didn't teach me to WRITE music at a masterful level, but without the tools to do so, I could not have learned to anyway.

Similarly in chess, just because an amateur, using myself for a familiar example, can't formulate a plan like Kasparov, does not mean I'm too thick to understand his strategies if they are explained to me. Once they are explained and understood, it isn't even slightly difficult to assimilate the small patterns of moves and positions you understand most clearly from your studies into your own games.

Studying the games alone is obviously not the best idea, but it certainly helps with an understanding of strategy to pair with my 50-100 tactics a day I'm attempting to commit to doing.

I'd recommend the book "Studying Chess Made Easy" by Soltis - it has a very detailed couple of chapters on how to go over master games.

Since the argument is whether or not watching GM's games is worthwhile or not, could you please tell me how I can break the barrier of "beginner" chess player, or do we all just relegate ourselves to the land of idiots and hope for the best?

>do we all just relegate ourselves to the land of idiots and hope for the best?<

Sadly, the statistics make this likely. Of the 80,000 or so rated players in the USCF, about 9% are at 1800 or higher. That hasn't changed for decades...it's like golf handicaps.

Of that group, only 10% make it to 2200...or 1% of the all around total. So...you can study as hard as you want, but it appears that you have less a 1 in 11 chance of actually becoming an "advanced" player.  All that Smyslov you digested notwithstanding.