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

Excellent article...and an excellent discussion. I understand that it is necessary to practise tactics, but not bother with statistics or ratings. Time after time one has to start learning tactics, not to memorize each opening by number and name (italian C50-C54...) but to practise the openings which suit to me best and play them out.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/more-puzzles/puzzle-171?quote_id=38254600#comment_box

Yeah, if you take two nearby points in a curve, a straight line between them can be a good approximation for city hall purposes.

I wouldn't doubt it's possible and please don't judge me on my rating on here and say "blah blah what would you know" because that just comes off as condescending,I'm just adding my two cents in.  I'm sure maybe knowing one or two Openings would be suffice but the majority of the time should be spent on tactics,end games and probably strategic play towards 1900+.   We're all human beings with "lives" and so yeah our study time is limited and not everyone can afford to do what Fischer did,so limited study time must be put to good use,not that studying Openings is a waste of time,at any level,but it isn't all that beneficial,I'd say one is better knowing solid opening principles,like develop your pieces,move each piece once etc.,that in and of itself is enough to get you to the middle game.  

As one author put it,yes you played the so and so variation perfectly and I commend you for that but a knight fork is a knight fork,you didn't see it (too busy caught up in your cute little fancy variation) and now you just lost your Queen to a family knight fork and as one youtuber put it,shortly after you'll lose your King next.  ...#tactics>openings 

I am over 9000 so this does not apply to me.

I think memorization of openings is valuable even for lower-rated players, because you can rely on them to go quickly but securely through the first few moves of the game and thus save time which would be lost to calculation if you did not know the standard openings.

anybody who just studies tactics and neglects understanding opening will not reach master level. And that is a palindrome!

Really? Hmm,how come soooooooooo many experts,teachers and the like disagree with you.  If you know nothing but Openings,how will you play in the middle game? Furthermore what if your opponents know nothing about the Openings you're trying to play,which most beginners play some really crazy lines and simply don't know or follow "book moves".   Also what does "be lost to calculation if you did not know the standard openings",no offense but what does that even mean? 

Learning the Openings is all about memorization but it SHOULD be about understanding the minute nuances and intricacies of the Opening and learning and studying as to WHY the moves are being played,I guess in a sense that does cut down on calculation if one "knows" but that still doesn't solve my initial question of what do you do if your opponent plays "out of book",you may be lost,if that's the extent of your Chess knowledge.  

As I've said several times on another forum,I think it's better for beginners to simply know the principles of the Openings,that's enough for lower rated players,the rest of the time probably would be better spent on tactics and some simple end games. 

Is anyone here advocating that one know nothing but openings?

That's all that was said so it was slightly implied, and also if you'll read that's why I said IF,respectfully I think his advice is poor for beginners,as studying Openings isn't the best thing for them,I could have sworn I went over this on another forum. *sighs* 

Aren't beginners routinely encouraged to play over sample games? So why should it be a problem to look at some games for a particular opening?

Is there a sentence where Luitpoldt purported to be saying all that a player should know?

Dude I'm not going to argue with you,I said it was slightly implied,don't nitpick with me,just let it go. 

If there is no sentence where Luitpoldt purported to be saying all that a player should know, why should it be taken as slightly implied that he was saying all that a player should know?

Perhaps of interest to look at the table of contents in the book sample here:

http://www.gambitbooks.com/pdfs/A_Complete_Chess_Course.pdf

I would say: focus on tactics and basic endgames but begin already to learn a basic repertoire.

Why a basic repertoire? Because all games begin with the opening (obviously), and following a repertoire will allow a beginner to play sound moves in the beginning of the game.

Following opening principles is of course possible, but I have the impression that a lot of players are playing a lot of different openings by principles, missing so the opportunity to gain experience in a single system.

Let’s say a player is playing 1.e4, 1.c4, 1.b4, 1.b3, 1.Nf3, 1.g3 in his games. Another player plays only 1.d4, often playing 2.c4. The first player will have big fun, win and lose, like we all. But he will rarely have the opportunity to learn the typical tactics related to a certain repertoire.

Player number two will also win and lose games like player number one, but every game will make him understand better the game evolving after 1.d4. He will learn that he can get a nice centre if Black plays the Marshal defence, he knows how to easily win material if black tries to hold material in the Queens Gambit Accepted, he will see that a lot of beginners will abort the game after facing 1.d4 because they heard that it is “very very difficult to play against 1.d4”, and he will often get a nice position after few moves because his opponents will try to play very dubious lines to get white out of the book.

I am NOT telling that beginners should learn only openings. Tactics, basic endgames and defence are the most important things to learn.

But there is no reason why not to invest some time learning a basic opening repertoire.

The key is to train efficiently, using spaced repetition to learn all aspects of the game (you can do this in Chessable), and analysing all games.

And avoiding blitz.

Or reduce blitz to two games per day.

I guess that most players who are playing here since years without reaching 1200 are playing only by principles using a lot of different systems as white and black.

Players who get quickly over 1400 are specialising rather early in a certain opening, are strong in tactics and have already some knowledge in endgames.

But yeah, if somebody has to choice between learning only openings or only tactics I would say: forget openings. But these things are not mutually exclusive.

I've been preaching this on at least 2 forums now. 

The mythos of “don’t learn openings until you are rated at leat 2000” was born from the experience that people learning exclusively openings with blunder almost immediately after they are out of the book.

Black

Or

White

Nothing in between

Opening is one aspect of the game
Not the most important but also important

I wanted to say above “will blunder”

I played my first tournament in 1959. I did not have a book on tactics -- in fact I only had one book.  There was no tactics trainer or the advantages players have today. I did not study tactics.

My rating at the end of the 12 game tournament was class A

Not bad!