Studying openings is highly UNDERrated!

Just gotta say - I've heard on and on about how overrated openings are, and how anyone under 2000 or even 1800 shouldn't spend more than 10% of their time studying openings, but I gotta say - after taking this advice for quite awhile, I've just starting studying openings in earnest, and I'm finding it one of the highest-yielding things I've ever studied in chess.

I will add that I'd consider studying openings a lot more than memorizng the main line or 1-2 variations of some opening and calling it a day - I've been working around a sort of repertoire with focus on commonly played lines, and using books/resources that analyze games well into the endgame for many lines so it a lot of middlegame training as well. 

I'd honestly wished I'd done this long, long time ago. In fact, I'd say this type of opening(+middlegame) study is valuable for beginners right from the get-go - rather than studying a lot of master games in positions that you rarely achieve in your openings (like studying Caro-Kann pawn formations when you're a open Sicilian black player) it's a lot more impactful when you deeply analyze some of the lines you play a lot (and lose a lot to.)

I've been particularly surprised with the few but significant number of very-difficult-to-find OTB moves there are in a lot of openings - if you haven't seen it before, you'll likely get nailed by it,even if you have great tactical acumen. (Some lines I was getting nailed by was the e3 Lasker trap in the Albin countergambit, and positional crushes in the Falkbeer Counter-gambit if you don't play a totally nonintuitive early Qe2!.) 

I was also losing a lot more than I won in the Kings Gambit Accepted lines when facing the solid Fischer Defense but I just got grandmaster Shaw's KG book and have suddenly had a lot more success with the very strange early Nc3!? and g3!? as white against it. There is no way you'd find these moves intuitively over the board, and they're super hard to find even with a computer (which is prob why it's Shaw's main recommendation!)

   It is interesting how nowadays we so often hear that learning openings isn't important until you reach a level such as 1800.

   When I learned chess back in the 1950ies, virtually all the chess books (and I read many at the time) stressed the importance of learning openings before anything else. Too, there never were words back then such as "book" and "lines".

    If I was starting out today, I would learn several basic openings...not memorize all the lines...but learn the principles. And I wouldn't worry about memorizing all the names and the names of variations. I personally look at chess as a thinking man's game, not a memory work piece.

   After I grasped the basic concepts of opening...controlling the center, building a defense, getting the Ns & Bs positioned, castling,etc. then I would start playing a lot of tactics. From there I would learn end games.

   Though, these are my personal opinions. Others will say to forget openings and do mostly tactics. Or, to get good at end games before learning openings. This has always seemed screwy to me. Often there is no end game. If you screw up at the opening, it will foul up the midgame and maybe there won't even be an end game.

   I will add one other thought... I just don't get it how some people get so carried away with learning openings that they memorize "book" all the way out to 10 or 20 moves but don't really comprehend the reasons for all those moves. I scratch my head when I hear this. 

As long as you understand why youre making the moves you make, and not just memorize them, then yes opening knowledge is valuable.  

At my rating you see all kinds of crap. The patzers who want quick checkmate in the opening, tempo wasting moves, giving up beautiful knight outposts for a buried bishop that hasn't even moved, you name it I've seen it.

It's impossible to play an opening against someone who doesn't know anything about openings, namely why I adopt systems more than anything. But from my perspective there is no excuse in not knowing the few basic moves and transtions involving openings. I play openings at my level just because of the responses you get; in the long run it will pay off. So in my eyes, you are at a serious disadvantage if you haven't even bothered with openings by 1800.

Today I played the French and it made the transition to QGD exchange :) It's alway interesting to see what responses you get, you WILL benefit from it in the long run.

honestly way overrated IMO. I studyed openings first and got really annoyed that I wasn't doing well. complaining how people wouldn't follow the lines I had studied etc. So I focused on tactics and a little endgame and I've improved significantly. 

I love Lajos Portisch's quote on openings.  

Your only task in the opening is to reach a playable middlegame.  - Lajos Portisch

Yes, it is that simple.  You dont need a deep understanding of openings, you dont need to memorize openings, you dont need to play the latest/greatest opening that GMs play.  You nly need to get to a playable middlegame.  

I got to USCF A class on middle/endgame knowledge, and opening principles.  

If openings are your thing, and its something you love to study, and it helps your game, that is what counts.  

I really agree with the thread topic.  Some of the biggest improvements in my game have come from opening study.  Highly under-rated by many.

Also, I disagree strongly with the portisch quote.  That's like saying your only goal in the middle game is to reach a playable endgame.  It's, frankly, silly.

The quote illustrates how basic the opening is.  You can get by on opening principles, but in the middle and endgame you cant.  You actually have to know what youre doing.  

Then the quote should say that and not something that is completely false.  Irks me the same way that "the hardest thing to do is win a won game" irks me.

No, it's not the hardest thing to do.  Obviously, winning a lost game is harder, for starters.  Statements that are blatantly untrue are not witty in any way to me.

OP here again. 

You know, to clarify, I don't have anything against pure memorization. In fact, I am strongly of the opinion that memorization is one of the BEST things you can do in chess! 

The difference, however, is that if you just memorize one line, you'll have learned very little to nothing. However, if you memorize that line and the 50 side branches that come off of it into winning/losing variations, you will be a formidable opponent in that line, even if goes 'out of book.' There's no way your brain can not pick up the similarities in positions and key motifs if you do that. 

I'd also add that when I'm talking about 'studying openings', I will add that I am studying them with the key goal of understanding the middlegame plan and knowing at least one concrete move line that leads to that sort of play. This is why I've found it so important to have books/resources that play out games to near the endgame - even if you don't fully understand the plan, you'll get a closer sense of it if you play out that game. 

I have the otherwise well regarded "Modern Chess Openings" by Paul Van Der Sterren (one of the most popular and reviewed openings books out there), and honestly, I think it's next to useless. Sure, he lists the major lines and even gives general words about general plans, but opening knowledge that superficial is useless, even for low-rated players. It's far better to just memorize one good game with the opening of choice than to memorize the 8 branch variations he lists but have no knowledge of how to proceed or what the typical piece and move patterns are.

So I guess my 'openings' study is probably in practice very similar to middlegame training - just that I really do think for time limited folks like myself (and most of us), it's much higher return on investment to spend a lot of time studying positions you actually play, rather than studying theoretical positions in openings that you never play and are unrelated.  I'm sure masters/GMs are strong in every position, so they study everything, but for example, it's not high yield at all for me to spend a lot of time studying the intricacies of blocked Dutch Stonewall positions when I play Kings Gambit and Sicilian Dragon open line setups. (I'll study them a bit sure, but not for the bulk of my study/memorization.)

Learning and understanding is useless without memorization.  It does no good to learn something and not remember it.

Also, proper opening study includes studying the resulting middle games.  

See Andrew Soltis "Studying Chess Made Easy."

Too bad that this silly guy Portisch was 1500+ points higher rated than you, PossibleOatMeal.

Doesn't make him immune from saying blatantly false things, apparently.  Unless you are claiming that when you play a game of chess, in the opening phase, you consider a move that wins outright and a move that reaches only a playable middle game exactly equivalent.  Because that's the literal interpretation of his statement.

Also, no one in the history of chess has ever been 1500 points higher rated than I am right now.  (probably shouldn't add this part because I'm sure it's the part you'll reply to and then we get to start bickering about how you consider a chess.com blitz rating the de facto rating to go by, since Portisch had one of those...or some other such nonsense)

I don't care about openings anymore I'm happy playing KG's Sicillians, Italians, and Spanish games. beyond those moves I don't care what happens so long as I don't blunder. 

The little bit of opening study I have done in the past was complete wasted time.

The only rating worth talking about is the official FIDE/ National Federation one... chess.com ratings do not count for anything real.

It's quite apparent that you have not understood at all what he said (and to which the vast majority of GM's and Senior Trainers agree), and it's up to you to figure out if this is natural, or not.

Exactly.  So you have no idea whether or not he is 1500+ points higher rated than I am, though you stated it as a fact.  I can assure you, he is not.

I understood what he meant.  He stated it very poorly.  In fact, the literal interpretation of what he said is egregiously false.  That means, it is, in fact, poorly worded.  That's the issue I have with it.  The same reason I have an issue with "The hardest thing to do is win a won game."  Obviously, I understand the point.  It is, also, blatantly false.  This is just plain old poor communication.

From my point of view, the memorisation aspect expects your opponent to know what you know.

What if they play moves to get you out of theory?

Usually moves that are not book moves have a drawback (otherwise they would be covered by opening theory).  The idea is if they play a sub-optimal move, you capitalize on the move's drawbacks.  Obviously, that's not always the case, but it very often is.  You should understand why the moves that are theoretical "book" moves are played and this will help you understand (and figure out at game time!) why non-book moves are not often played.

PossibleOatmeal wrote:

    I understand what you are saying and to some extent I agree with you. But, OTOH, I can't tell you how many millions of times I have been able to think my way through problems...even ones that I previously solved and had not memorized.

   Take doing chess tactical puzzles. I have seen countless postings from guys who try to memorize every puzzle. Well, good for them. But not at all what I want to do. I want to be able to see a puzzle and think my way through it. It is too much, IMO, to try to memorize millions of various permutations and combinations...make that billions.

   I must add this... What I have been saying pertains to traditional time-limit chess, or maybe rapid chess. But most young people seem to prefer speed chess. In such games, forget what I said. You don't have enough time to think. Just store everything in your cranial RAM and push wood...fast!. Forget about "thinking". That is so obsolete that only gray-haired old men (like me) do it.