Opening, Middle-game, or Endgame, Which is most critical for improving your chess and why?

Also, knowing your endgames gives more direction to your middle-games. 

true

Well, If you manage to win before reaching the endgame then learning endgames isn't that useful anymore right?

I concur

You probably need stronger competition if this occurs with any regularity.

In the end, logic trumps everything.

magnus usually doesnt care about opening, i see his "magnus vs. many people" matches, he does weird openings on some but he gets upperhand in middlegame. endgames are usually well known for almost all paterns. i think middle game is the key.

Very true.

An honest question and honest answers, but one argumentative question brought in the site’s biggest troll. Another thread dies.

For those that remember Reb (NM), he'd always argue that endgames didn't matter because most games are won or lost in the middlegame.

I'd usually bring up that even if it never reaches the endgame, knowing the endgame allows you to play the middlegame better. For example during an attack your opponent can't do certain trades to end the attack because the resulting endgame is lost. So they lose in the middlegame but only because you both knew the endgame.

And also I'd point out that people (like Reb) who make claims like they're bad at endgames or never studied endgames are misleading new players because people like Reb are a lot better at endgames than what those words imply.

I played some friendly blitz games OTB with one master who was like this. "I never studied endgames, they're not useful" etc. We analyzed two different endgames together... and he knew a lot more than me! And I really have studied endgames!

What people call "study" and "being bad at" are relative. It's like when Svidler says he know "nothing" about an opening line during banter blitz, then proceeds to play 15 moves of book and quotes games that had this position from the 70s lol.

But still, I say the middlegame is the most important

You can't neglect anything if you want to be as good as you can be, but if I had to choose one, that's my choice.

Reb is still around. I played him in a bullet game last week. We didn’t quite reach an endgame, but considerations about a possible endgame certainly figured in my middle game calculations. It was 2 1 bullet, so close to a 3 0 blitz game.

https://www.chess.com/live/game/4803215764

Exactly. And as others already mentioned it's good for calculation training and experience coordinating pieces and all that.

I guess I'll add that the endgame stresses piece activity more than any other phase. When you only have a king and one other piece, if one of them is bad you might just be lost immediately. So it's also good training in that way.

As I recall you've both played the french forever, so maybe you'd have some fun games.

... but it seems at least in that one you were a lot faster, ended the game with about 1 minute.

think about chess 960.. opening lines are useless. end games are well known for all scenarios.. chess is all about middlegame.. because midgame has the most possibilities.

Except you suggested a move in another thread that blunders away a win in the endgame. Maybe you should study it afterall. 

I think this question is relative to the strength of the player.  When somebody asks which is most critical for improving their game, I assume they are likely to be 1200-1600ish and past the beginner stage.

Once you reach a minimum threshold for openings and endgames, I think the middlegame is where the sky is the limit.

Opening:

- Casually study and play wide breadth of openings against everyone, to learn principles and reinforce them

- Casually play a wide breadth of openings against stronger competition, to learn common opening traps (I think you retain these much better when you actually have them played against you ...)

- Decide what openings you like and focus on those, study them out to 10-15 moves and analyze them with an engine

- Don't study the Najdorf out to 30 moves of theory

- Don't worry about incorporating Carlsen's latest wrinkle in the Berlin into your game

- Don't narrow your focus down so much you become an expert in a single gambit or something

Endgames:

- Learn how to count squares and evaluate pawn races in your head

- Learn how to mate with as many combos of major and minor pieces as possible

- Learn how to get and hold the opposition with your king

- Learn the Lucena and Philidor positions

- Learn the basics of rook and pawn endgames

- Learn the basics of B vs. N endgames

- Don't drill B+N mating nets until you can do it in 15 seconds

- Don't read Fine's endgame book cover to cover and play out every example

Then you have the middlegame...the thing about the middlegame is that you can quickly learn tactical patterns by doing puzzle rush, etc. and so nowadays lots of players are great tactically throughout the game, but they lack the skills to actually produce the middlegame positions that give them a lot of those tactical shots they are so good at spotting in seconds...

Anyone can aspire to be a Tal, and most everyone does.  It's fun.  Today's path of least resistance takes you right there to this place:

- Good at opening principles, specialized small opening repertoire

- Decent enough endgames, good at certain aspects

- Really good at tactics, poor at positional play in equal positions and formulating a plan

There are metric tons of players from 1200-1600 in this boat.  So you should try to aspire to some new players...try Petrosian or Karpov.  If you want to understand positional play, it's time to start playing over master games.  Try to find the boring ones ...play out  a defensive Caro-Kann by Karpov, or find some Lasker closed game.  You need to start understanding the answers to these kinds of questions:

- Why did these GMs spend the whole game trying to control e4?

- How do I recognize when sacrificing a knight to start a pawn roller is worthwhile?  What *is* a pawn roller?

- Why do GMs strike back in the center when they are losing on one flank instead of moving all their pieces to the losing side of the board to defend?

- When should I keep tension in a position, and when should I simplify down to an endgame?

- I know about development, so why is my queenside rook still usually in the starting corner at the end of my games?

- What is a tempo, how much is it worth, and how can I get extra ones?

- Why do the Berlin and Scandinavian defenses work when they seem to violate opening principles?

- Why do a lot of GMs seem to not care about knights on the rim?  How did they make the decision that it was okay in one position but not another?  What is with Carlsen and Na3?

Many of these questions you will never know the full answer to (I sure don't), but you need to ask them anyway.  When you start to understand these tradeoffs and when to make them, you will be starting to really understand chess past the tactical level a lot of players are stuck at.

it was a time critical moment, was in blitz if i recall correctly. but it is not what we are talking about, you can claim that the middlegame is the most important part where you still have missing parts in "your" endgame. Since it is not about me.