If you aren't a GM, having a slight advantage out of the opening is insignificant.

I often see discussions on these forums centered around when it becomes neccesary to study openings.

The general concensus among most of you seems to be that if your rating is below 2000, then it's basically a waste of time.

I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment 100%, and I made this post just to provide an example of why that is the case.

The game I posted below is a rapid game that I just finished playing. My rapid rating, at the time of this post, is 2309. My opponents rating is 2384.

Watch as I completely disregard every single opening principle. Going into the middle game, the engine eval was at +3 for white.

A +3 advantage coming out of the opening? That's gotta be pretty significant, right?

You'd really think so, but most of the time that just isn't the case.

In fact, by move 11 his advantage  had already been cut in half. At that point the eval showed +1.3.

4 or 5 moves later it was pretty much even.

By move 21, that advantage he had out of the opening is nothing but a distant memory, as the evaluation showed a -2 advantage for black. By the time we were 50 moves in, my advantage was up to -16. 

Despite the awful awful opening play, this game could have been easily won if I had managed my time a little bit better (this is also why I prefer 15|10 over 10|0.)

We are both 2300+ rated players. As you can see, the opening made exactly 0 difference in the way this game ended up playing out.

I'm sure there's going to be somebody that looks at this and says something along the lines of, "Yeah but you wouldn't have gotten the advantage back if your opponent hadn't made a few of those massive blunders!"

And yes, you're not wrong. If my opponent hadn't blundered away his advantage, I most certainly wouldn't have gotten it back.. But that is precisely my point!

Nearly every single chess game that I have ever played in or witnessed (below Master level, of course) has contained a BUNCH of blunders just like these.

I would argue that if you aren't titled, studying openings is never going to be a neccesary part of your chess development. I also know of at least a few titled players who admit that they still haven't studied very deeply into their openings either.

If you aren't Magnus Carlsen, you most likely are not going to be able to hold onto that + 0.6 advantage for the entire game.

Now if you WANT to study openings, I'm not trying to discourage you from doing so.

For me personally, studying openings is one of my favorite things to do. For me, a major reason I love chess as much as I do is because of openings. I love to see how different openings influence the very specific middle games that they lead into. The mystique of it all is probably the biggest reason I even got into this game in the first place.

So if studying openings is something you actually enjoy doing, then by all means, go ahead and do it.

There's no telling how many hours I've spent scouring the entire internet reading any article I could find about the Philidor. (yes, I still play the Philidor any chance I get. Despite the hate for it that I've found on here, I tend to win with it more often than I lose)

All that I'm saying, is if you don't think studying openings is fun, then don't do it.

If you're forcing yourself to study them with the intention of seriously improving your chess, your time would be much better spent doing tactics. Because for 99.9% of us, the opening isn't going to be a deciding factor in your games.

Don't remember what made me want to post this, but thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

I have no interest in learning openings. My matches are almost all dominated by mistakes and blunders. Playing regular openings which I could use to trap opponents would increase my rank a bit, but it'd do nothing for the facets of the game which I need to practice: calculating ahead, reducing impulsivity and simply not playing while tired!

Fully agree. I haven't studied openings at all but I've learned by playing to survive the opening phase and go from there.

Right 😅

If I would've been playing 15|10 instead of 10|0 it wouldn't have been an issue lol. But whenever there's no increment and I realize there's a whole endgame to play through with 5 seconds on my clock I spaz out and start spamming random premoves.

Given my rating, my say probably doesn't mean a lot in this context but I agree, from a logical point of view, there are far too many variables to calculate in the opening, a lot of responses that if you haven't studied will be taken over by intuition anyways, studying endgames and conversion would likely be a more effective use of time, learning tactics also would benefit your mid-game, if you are insistent on studying, if not just play the game and get insight into what doesn't "feel" right and what looks fun to play, the whole point in virtually any game is to enjoy it, I enjoy losing badly and seeing where my position fell apart sometimes more than winning, chess up chad and play some games!

You should not learn an opening to gain a slight advantage, you should learn an opening to know what to do in the opening stage of the game, it gives confidence when you know what your plan is going to be, and plans are better understood when you know the ideas in the opening you are playing. Middlegame is the result of the opening you play. For eg: Plans in KID are completely different from plans in QGD based on the pawn structure.

And if you know some basics of your opening at beginner or intermideate level, you will gain a huge advantage not slight.

I half-agree with the post, only  for online chess. Having a position +0.5 vs equal in a classical otb game can matter even at 1600 level. Online you're playing 10+0 and other time controls without increment, of course its not gonna matter, theres so many mistakes 

And also the reason you lost in the game was coz you didn't knew what to do, you did have an advantage but you did not had an idea what to do next or how to proceed and ended up loosing all your advantage.

Mmmm, having just played in an U1600 OTB classical a few weeks ago, 0.5 doesn't matter there either. Almost every one of my games has had a 4 point swing at a critical moment.

eh the opening does matter, it leads to how comfortable you are in the position and ultimately how precise you can be too. Play 1.g4 your whole chess career otb as a 1900, you'll lose vs most 1800s as they'll be ready

I agree with you, I mean even sometimes GM's are unable to win with an advantage from the opening. I think too many players focus on learning theoretical lines and do not learn how to play chess on their own.

Openings are certainly very important regardless the level

Yeah I probably should've clarified, but it was specifically referring to online chess 

As I said above, I did know what to do.

But with no increment at all and less than 5 seconds on the clock it would've been very difficult (if not impossible) to complete the remaining 15+ moves left to close the game out, so when my clock hit 5 I immediately just had to spam a hundred premoves and pray to get the flag. (This is why I also can't play bullet 😂)

That's why the loss was so frustrating, because I knew EXACTLY how to close it out and mate them, I just didn't have the time to do it. Poor time management

I'm 1900 (on a good day) and know nothing about openings aside one or two of the bigger traps (Greek gift, fried liver) and general opening principles. For sure it's enough at my level, and I agree with the OP. I like "guess the Elo" on Gotham chess, but one of the things I find weird is he'll say things like "would a 1400 play d4 in the London?". I think he vastly overestimates the opening knowledge of rating levels.

It’s not too hard to convert a one pawn up position if you can simplify

If one in 500 people was a gm I’d flip out lol

Well obviously, and sometimes even if the opponent is a pawn up it could be isolated or doubled, or both and it cancels out having an extra pawn, it all depends on position