don't study openings until level 2000?

Hey everyone, So I was reading a post on here where someone said that it was not recommended for anyone under 2000 to study openings. Now I know that that has to be false because there are so many books on openings for beginners and I doubt these beginners are level 2000. But is there a certain level that it is generally expected someone will begin to take openings very seriously, and anything under that you just employ basic principles like bring out your pieces etc? I currently am reading Yasser seiriwan book on openings and it does not seem like it is for someone higher than me, and I am quite low

I think there is a balance to be struck. Pick one or two openings that you like for white, a defense for 1.e4 and a defense for 1.d4, then learn their main lines about 3 or 4 moves deep. Then base the rest of your play on basic principles and you will not be hindered until you reach about 1800-2000 elo. That's what all the good players I hang out with tell me.

Choose a couple openings and study them. Just get small advantages from the opening and try and get good at middle games and endgames (balance it as said above) and try to convert it to a win.

You should study openings from the time you begin playing chess.

BUT! By studying, I mean studying an opening in increasing layers of detail.

Example: The Ruy Lopez as White

1. The opening begins 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 (attacking e5) Nc6 3.Bb5 (attacking the N that defends the pawn).

2. Black's main replies are 3...a6 (challenging the bishop) and 3...Nf6 (developing and pressing against the central light squares e4, d5).

2a. Against anything other than 3...a6 or 3...Nf6, White should try to expand in the center, preferably with c3 before d4, so that if ...exd4, White keeps a two-pawn center with cxd4 (which confers a space advantage and therefore slightly cramps Black's pieces, making them a bit less effective).

2b. Against 3...Nf6, understand that 4.0-0 can lead to exchanges in the center and a more open game, and that 4.d3 will lead to a slower, more maneuvering game.

2c. Against 3...a6, capturing 4.Bxc6 is perhaps a bit weaker than 4.Ba4 objectively, but White has simple play and can get a small nagging advantage with some care. Defending the Exchange Variation well requires skills beyond the reach of most non-masters.

3. The main line after 3...a6 is 4.Ba4. This bishop has the potential to be the best minor piece on the board, so White preserves it. White then slowly prepares a central expansion while keeping Black's forces back. 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Be7 (5...Nxe4 allows White to open the center where he is castled and Black is not; Black is certainly okay but they had better know what they're doing) 6.Re1 (by covering the e4-pawn, White threatens to win a clean pawn with Bxc6 followed by Nxe5) b5 (stopping that) 7.Bb3 d6 (protecting the e5-pawn in order to play ...Na5 and exchange the potentially monstrous b3-bishop) 8.c3 (preparing an escape for the B and support for d2-d4) 0-0 9.h3 (prefacing d2-d4 with this move prevents ...Bg4 which could place some annoying pressure on White's center).

4. From here, Black has various ways to rearrange his pieces and fight for the center.

5. The Ruy Lopez is so good for White because he can play on the queenside, center, or kingside, or multiple parts of the board at once. It does require quite a bit of skill though.

6. Some role models (for White): Lasker, Capablanca, Boleslavsky, Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, Leko, Carlsen, etc.

Yesterday in Queens Gambit accepted i lost my rook because never played

this tillnow..but losing a rook didn't bother me because am far higher rated than him,but ultimately draw but due to my fault..also had seen in a chess.com tournament , a 1500 player decimate a 1930 player with fried liver attack.. all these happens even if u know ..Both were my team mates in 3 groups/neo has since quit chess.com on his own..not cheating..

game id..http://www.chess.com/echess/game?id=111498718.

Compare Ruy Lopez with some opening principles.

3. Bb5 (Isn't c4 supposed to be a better position for the bishop? Also some say develop knights before bishops.)

3. ... a6 (Doesn't develop much. I usually play Nf6.)

4. Ba4 or Bxc6 (But you're not supposed to move a piece more than once during the first 10 moves.)

This happens with a lot of book openings. There seem to be some contradiction between them and opening principles.

And the fried liver attack, which has decimated me in blitz, where the opponent is not following opening principles yet wins.

I doubt that anyone can live to 2000.

.. (sorry, lame joke).

On a serious note, I think studying openings can help increase your ratings but not your actual "chess skills".

I believe the main essence of chess is tactics and calculations (especially in the endgame). So what does studying openings help you? Openings are pre-computed moves before you start the game so that you don't have to calculate much once the game has started. It gives you time advantage (and positional advantage, most likely) so you have more time to calculate than your oppponents.

That said, I believe everyone should study openings. It gives you a rough idea of the plan for the game. And the guy that said "Don't study openings until you're 2000-rated!"? I swear he studies openings before he's 2000-rated, too :p.

I'm just a patzer tho, just my 2 cents :p.

Last saturday i had a training session with some FIDE 2150 rated guy. We analyzed one league game against some 1700 rated guy:

Here i was out of book and wondered or to be more precice panicked about blacks "attacking" options. So i gave up my bishop pair by 13.Bxe5?!

The 2150 guy criticized me for overestimationg the opponents "attack" and for giving up my trump, the bishop pair.

Then we searched an database for this position after move 12 and quickly scanned through three games with high rated players:

All three grandmasters played Qc3, b2-b4 and f2-f3 followed by e3-e4. That's a plan in this position! The next time i play this, i'll have this plan available.

This is how to improve openings on my 1700 level.

follow your intuition.

1. Why would c4 be a better position for the White bishop? It doesn't threaten anything there. By playing 3.Bb5 White is setting up a positional threat to exchange on c6 if/when it becomes advantageous for him (as the Nc6 controls e5 and d4). Also, it makes ...d7-d6 problematic as Black would be creating a self-pin, neutralizing the his N's influence on the center and possibly allowing d2-d4. For example: 3.Bb5 d6?! 4.d4! (4.c3 is also good) and White either keeps a two-pawn center, or establishes a piece on d4 that is tough to exchange after 4...exd4 5.Nxd4 (5.Qxd4 is also interesting).

2. The move 3...a6 either forces White to make the (objectively) less desirable exchange on c6 immediately, or to move the bishop to the inferior square a4. Provided Black can handle 4.Bxc6, there's no downside to this move: it doesn't help develop, but it does, in some way, challenge White's initiative. Please note that 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.Nxe5?! Qd4 leads White nowhere.

3. White may lose a tempo by Bxc6, but Black will have to also lose a tempo to recapture. As for Ba4, White hopes to later use the "hook" created by 3...a6 to open the queenside for his better positioned forces (as White will almost certainly have more space and therefore better development).

4. I agree that chess openings can be confusing if you try to follow "the principles." The only things that seem to help are good books or, even better, a good coach.

@ Die_Schanze:

You have a good coach. We non-masters know how to make chess understandable to our students. 

Don't play the fried liver

Fine a couple of openings that you enjoy playing.  Learn the ideas behind those openings, learn the pawn structures.  No need to get all obsessive over openings until you start approaching 2000.

Opening preparation is good at all levels. Even if you're a raw beginner, if you start the game as black playing the Damiano defense, you're not going to last too long, nor will you survive for long even with good middlegame skills if you're playing a markedly inferiorly line.

I used to ignore opening preparation because of all that advice for beginners to not study openings, but that was definitely bad advice. If you don't know the tabiyas of your opening preferences, you get these really hard to play positions that are positionally lost right out of the getgo unless you're +400 points better than your opponent. 

I also think that openings preparation by definition includes study of most common middlegame positions as well as refutation of most common non-book moves. Just memorizing 2-3 main lines alone doesn't count for squat in terms of learning an opening. 

I don't think however you should spend the bulk of your time studying openings, but you def shouldn't ignore it, even raw beginners. 

I've found 'Openings Encyclopedias' completely useless. It's far more useful to just fire up Stockfish, and memorize the replies and refutations to the lines that you are actually encountering commonly in games. What are useful though are books dedicated to a single opening - you get a lot of ideas and attacking/defending plans in those books, and you learn a lot about chess in the process.

Both the Italian and the Ruy Lopez are good. However, the Ruy Lopez is usually considered to be a better try for obtaining an advantage. Both 3...a6 and 3...Nf6 are good. The move 3...a6 immediately puts the question to White's bishop. The move 4. Ba4 doesn't lose tempo because 3...a6 isn't a developing move. On the other hand, 4. Bxc6 fractures Black's pawn structure. The Ruy Lopez is one of White's best openings and it doesn't contradict opening principles.

Hardly a memorable example, I'm afraid.

- It has nothing to do with "fried liver attack" as you claim, and

- after 5...Nxe5 white has lost a piece for nothing.

The right move which almost every schoolboy knows (much lower rated than those guys) is of course 5.Bxf7+ which wins a pawn, and keeps a positional advantage.

The only explanation is either that both players were stoned while playing this "game", or that it was shameless sandbagging.

While a game could be won by tactics in middle game or just one side blunders at endgame or fails to convert advantage.. Knowing what you are doing at openings can increase your chances for victory. It's often a mistake to assume when you see your opponent does not know lines or plays dubious moves in beginning but you don't actually punish him ,expecting same weak play for him later on the game, often players are way better later on for example Russians or Armenians or we Bulgarians - many times i am worse with white after opening or middle game but when some pieces and pawns are exchanged and position is not drawish i find myself outplaying opposition.

"... I feel that the main reasons to buy an opening book are to give a good overview of the opening, and to explain general plans and ideas. ..." - GM John Nunn (2006)
"The way I suggest you study this book is to play through the main games once, relatively quickly, and then start playing the variation in actual games. Playing an opening in real games is of vital importance - without this kind of live practice it is impossible to get a 'feel' for the kind of game it leads to. There is time enough later for involvement with the details, after playing your games it is good to look up the line." - GM Nigel Davies (2005)

"... [Modern Chess Openings (15th ed.)] pretends to be everything for everybody, but it isn’t; it pretends to be up-to-date and relevant in all chapters, but it isn’t; it should be a good book, but it isn’t. ..." - FM Carsten Hansen (2008)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140626165820/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen110.pdf
"... For new players, I cannot recommend books that use [an encyclopedic] type of presentation [of opening theory], because the explanatory prose that elaborates typical plans and ideas is usually absent, thus leaving the student without any clear idea why certain moves are played or even preferred over other apparently equivalent moves. ..." - FM Carsten Hansen (2010)
"... For beginning players, [Discovering Chess Openings] will offer an opportunity to start out on the right foot and really get a feel for what is happening on the board. ..." - FM Carsten Hansen (2006)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627114655/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen91.pdf
"... Everyman Chess has started a new series aimed at those who want to understand the basics of an opening, i.e., the not-yet-so strong players. ..." - FM Carsten Hansen (2002)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627055734/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen38.pdf