HEY NOOBS! Forget Openings, Study Tactics (The right way)

Haha i didnt even see this before... Are you serious or trolling? You won with a tactic.. Mate in 1... is a tactic.

Thankyou to the OP, you can tell them the truth, but they are unwilling to let reality make any inroads! Openings suck.

Is it realistic for a player to hope to have the same experience as Nakamura?

His 'tactic' theory is a total bs. Keep up the good work OP.Throw the noobs to the wolfs and jackals.

We need to distinguish between OTB chess and online chess and between fast games and classic/slow games .  Whats good advice for one may be bad advice for the other . If you are an OTB player another good reason to know some openings is because of the clock . While you may be able to avoid traps with just general consideration through the first dozen moves or so if you take 20 minutes to do so to your opponent's 5 ( because he has memorized the opening moves ) you are at a big disadvantage on the clock already . So , for such practical reasons its a good idea to do some opening work . I agree however that beginners ( definition needed ) should spend most of their study time on tactics . Beginners rarely reach endings so they need not study endings beyond basic endings .  How do we define " beginner" ? 

@Spartan  I thought so... No evidence.  I don't know why it is that you don't want to accept the truth, tactics are the most important thing for you to be doing right now to improve as a player. 
           A lot of authors are trying to sell opening books.   Maybe it is the only type of book some of these authors are qualified to write!  Maybe some of them are desperate for sales, it's hard making any type of living in chess as an IM or lower, most of their profit comes from these sales,  so of course they aren't going to stop a beginner from buying their book, even though they know it is probably not the most study resource for them.  Again we will open up the floor for challenges:  Option A) Please provide a quote in which a professional chess player stated that an opening book had the biggest impact on his/her development.  Option B)  Demonstrate that most of your games have been decided out of the opening, and that the evaluation didn't shift multiple times after the opening (good luck)        Option C) Ignore all of the data, keep trolling and hurting the hard working new students that might benefit from learning that tactics/calculation is the #1 thing hindering their advancement.   While I would prefer you refraining from option C, I surely cannot prevent you from doing it.  Honestly I love all of you, we are all human just trying to figure out our purpose here on this strange blue planet spiraling through the universe.  If you are truly interested in diligent chess study and the mental rewards produced by seeing positive results as the fruit of labor, take the *Two-Month Tactics Challenge* Spend 1 hour each day on tactics (preferably before you even play 1 game or log onto forums) for 2 months.  You will complete around 2000 puzzles in just 2 months time.  If you have never done this, TRY IT, it friggen works!  The problem is most people do not have the patience or motivation for such a thing.  I have worked for Orlov Chess Academy and I have done a decent amount of coaching.  I am not some random internet troll spewing BS.  What was the biggest thing that made a student go from 600-900? Tactics.. 900-1200?  Tactics.. 1200-1500? You guessed it TACTICS.  TACTICS are how you gain or maintain material, if you are down material, without significant compensation, you are in a losing position, it is pretty simple to understand.

Who is advocating that a player focus on openings, memorizing hundreds of variations and seeking huge upset games?

"... Overall, I would advise most players to stick to a fairly limited range of openings, and not to worry about learning too much by heart. ..." - FM Steve Giddins (2008)

"... 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 average player only needs to know a limited amount about the openings he plays. Providing he understands the main aims of the opening, a few typical plans and a handful of basic variations, that is enough. ..." - FM Steve Giddins (2008)

Antonio , do you have an OTB rating ? Have you ever played in a rated OTB event ? 

I agree to an extend about what you recommend for my improvement.but still it doesn't explain the need to train a total beginner in tactics.You are a bit delusional to say that an utter beginner even understands tactics.Hell...,where did you learn your openings from...mothers womb?!

Sure, that's one way to do it. Though it's probably not the quickest, nor the most reliable.

There are a lot of players who, left to their own trial and error, will simply come to the wrong conclusions and fail to improve.

We've all seen them: those who've been at it for decades and are still struggling at a lower level. Often they rely on their own invented openings, which frequently have no real bearing on the position at hand—but rather are just some repeated setup that they try to accomplish every single game.

Or the players who maneuver around one-move tactics, not really seeing the board at a deeper level, playing reactionary chess rather than actually forming plans that relate to the openings at hand.

For players like this, telling them to just "figure it out by doing tactics!" probably isn't the best solution.

Tactics are certainly important, and any study regimen that involves tactical study should be applauded. But we shouldn't be promoting ignorance in the openings, either.

I have only played in 4 OTB tournaments, 21 Games, I have a provisional rating of 1819 USCF but that is 2 years old and I have improved drastically since.  I am studying openings now, but not by buying some stupid book.  I will use chessgames.com or another resource to look at game after game in the same openings by different players, that is how I study openings, but I am not qualified enough to suggest that method to others, but I like it a lot myself.

Why dont I find you on uschess.org ? Isnt that your name on your homepage ?  Laak,Philip ?

I list possibilities , and the links are intended to help people to judge whether or not this or that book is something that they want to work on. Do you imagine that I have ever advised anyone to not work on tactics?

Hey OK, lets FORGET the achieving master debate without studying openings at all, yes i'll admit it would honestly be really hard, but this forum is for BEGINNERS and what they need to know that the main thing that is preventing them from gaining their next few hundred pts is becoming more precise with calculations.  I think some of you higher rated players may be forgetting just how many tactical mistakes 1200 level players make.   The chance of a 1200 OTB producing a perfect tactical game in a dynamic position against a good opponent is less than 1 in a million.  At the 600-1400 level, you can spend 80% of your study time on tactics puzzles, 15% on watching videos on strategy/positional play, and 5% of your time studying openings, and this might be close to optimal for most of these players 

This article delighted me. I was convinced about the importance of the tactic study, but I was still trying to memorize opening moves. I won't do that anymore. From now on, I will just focus on my tatics. 

No, I will send you my name on PM

I am serious. I mated my dad OTB

Want to complain about a specific sentence by me? I did not pick the name of this thread:

"HEY NOOBS! Forget Openings, Study Tactics (The right way)"

Honestly I love the controversy though!  While a lot of trolls are miserable or just attention-deprived, they are actually benefiting in a way by keeping this as a "hot topic" so as a result more noobs are exposed to this notion that they need to try being diligent with the tactics trainer for a couple of months straight and see if it doesn't drastically improve their chess.