opening or endgame

What is more important to be good at the opening or the endgame?

Endgame. Opening you can do with basic ideas in mind, i.e. develop quickly and safely, gain central control, move King to safety. Endgame takes technique and practice. In baseball, who is more clutch: the starting pitcher (of whom there is a rotation of 5) or the closer?

yea, endgame is definitely harder to understand/find the right moves in.  opening is rather easy comparitively, because the goal is to get pieces/pawns OUT.  in the endgame the goal is usually queening, but there are so many small tricks and rules to remember that it's nice to hit that aspect of the game harder.  a good balance of both is best, IMO.

Is my left hand more important or my right foot?

If you screw up the opening, you might not get to an end game. In fact, if you really screw it up, you might not even get to a middle game.

But, I just started playing chess last week, so this is only a wildass guess.

The thing is, you need to be able to finish. Chess is still chess. Learning opening theory is useless when you do not understand the basics. An average player can get out of an opening with little damage done. Use logic in the opening. If you begin by studying openings and simply what the "best" response is you lose the ability to think and calculate, which is what the middle game is. I forget who said it, but a quote I once used was, "The winner is the person who makes the next to last mistake." I have found very few players who play flawlessly all of the time. An inaccuracy in the opening will be easily rectified by sharp play in the middle game, and a knowledge of end game will allow you the easy win.

So if you are entering an otb tournament, and assuming you are already studying tactics and strategy intensely, are you better off using the rest of your limited study time toward studying endgames or developing your opening repertoire (assuming tactics and strategy are already studied in depth daily)?  (When will 960 take over?!)

I can see the long-term benefit of endgame study, but practically, wouldn't having an opening repertoire save you some quick losses and save time on the clock for more grueling middlegame thinking?   Or are those just short-term considerations that will be more than made up with diligent endgame study?

Coming from my experience, go prepared with responses to the normal openings, 1. d4, e4, c4, f4. Just what your immediate response will be. From there, at an amateur level, your knowledge of chess will keep you prepared. That's how I went at my first (and to this point only). I lost my first game to a much stronger opponent due to a couple major blunders, lost my second because I made a very silly mistake in a Queen's Gambit, and the third I won because of sharp play. When you are White, just get into a familiar position. Play a lot. Most players at an amateur level will come in with one maybe two opening ideas. Being able to play chess will save you. Imagine all the variations you have to memorize, and if they deviate at all, it is difficult to find a good response if you are simply going through rote memorization. Much better to understand end game tactics and play simple sharp chess before then.

I agree that endgames are more important in chess, but a starter is definatly more important than the closer in baesball.

Meh. I'm more of a soccer-guy, but I figured with Americans it was probably safer attempting a baseball analogy.

But if you give up 4 goals in the 1st period...

If you give up four goals in the first period, you need to go back and practice the basics. Basic Chess understanding and basic opening understanding complemented with superior endgame knowledge is much better than the opposite.

Questions like this have started to make a funny impression on me.  Basically the answer is if you want to be a good player... then BOTH are necessary to learn.

It would be like asking about basketball, is it more important to be in good shape or have shooting and dribbling skills?  Well geez, unless the player completely sucks they're going to have worked at least a little in all these areas.

That is true waffilemaster. I guess the better question would be: what should I become good at first?

Yeah, that's a better question

As a beginner I bought Fundamental Chess Endings (FCE) as one of my first chess books and tried to work though it.  I didn't get passed page 20 or so because it was way too in depth.

So anyway, to make a long story short, work on each in proportion to your current ability.  Learn overkill mates and that passed pawns are strong in the endgame, and around the same time learn the opening is about development, the center, and king safety.  Next learn a little bit about K+P vs K or how rooks are effective behind passed pawns, and about that time learn the first 4 or 5 moves of the Italian, scotch, or Ruy. etc etc.

That would be my answer anyway.  In a hard core chess school where you're going to be made into a master they may start with more endgames because with fewer pieces it's easier to get a grasp on and lays the groundwork for middle game study which in turn lets you know what works in the opening.  The problem is though playing games is indispensable to learning the game, so you're going to have to sprinkle in a little bit of everything at some point.  In other words it would be impractical to make a student learn one phase exclusively for any long period of time.

NM Reb, who is an NM by the way, kind of downplays endgames until one hits 1900-2000 (excepting overkill mates and some king and pawn easy stuff), and that is coming from an NM.  

Knowing openings only helps a very little bit with playing the other phases of the game. I'm sure you've had the experience of playing what opening theory you knew and then saying "now what?"

Endgame knowledge helps you understand what your middlegame choices are going to affect down the road. It also gives you the ability to bail out into an endgame you know how to play at some point in the middlegame. Knowing that a bishop will be better than a knight in the endgame that's coming will help you know what trades to make in the middlegame, and thus give you more guidance.

Openings you can get through on basic principles and not blundering any tactics or traps. Endgames simply require that you know the technique sometimes. 

All you need for opening knowledge is the first few moves, and some experience with the positions you're likely to find yourself in. Know common ideas, and play from there. Your opponents will give you opportunities, I promise you. But, if you don't find those opportunities, then all the opening knowledge in the world won't help you play the middlegame, and then you're going to an endgame about which you know little.

However, if you know endgames better, you can go to an endgame and have a chance to convert it if you fail to find the middlegame opportunities. 

GMs say IMs generally have one area where they're weak and to beat them all the GM has to do is find it.

Most NMs supposedly have 2, and so to beat them is even easier (for GMs).

But if you want to pull rank and use appeal to authority fallacies lets have a look at what Capablanca is well known of recommending

Yes, concerning inaccuracies, endgames are the least forgiving of any phase.  Also this is likely the phase where you'll be short on time, and will have to rely on your training vs trying to solve your problems OTB.

I'm with Estragon and against NM Reb on this one. One you know an ending such as the Lucena position or how to mate with K+B+N vs K you don't have to worry about someone coming along with an "improvement" or "refutation" of what you have learened as often happens in openings.

Capablanca was once asked by a strong amateur how to become a master, and Capa told him to study endgames. A decade later Capa met the same amateur who ignored his advice, and was still...an amateur.

I think you have to study the endgame. Particularly at lower levels people play endgames so awfully. If you have the knowledge you get a lot of extra half point.

In my blog there are two games, one where my opponent converts a win into a draw due to lack of endgame knowledge and the other where my opponents loses in an equal position, due to poor endgame play.

http://blog.chess.com/view/a-mate-in-5-psychology-and-the-endgame