The Opening is the Most Important Part of Chess

A lot of people think the opening is dribble, that to play the opening well is not only unimportant, but a waste of time. I will tell you this: if you delay chess thought till the middlegame, you will always lose to a person who has spent time on their openings and is prepared to play the middlegame and endgames intuitively. How you open is so important to where your game goes and many people don't realize this. 

I mean to say that we should be studying our openings to a far greater extent. I have studied openings more than I have studied endings. The reason for this is that I believe all endings can be won with proper focus and attention and knowledge of plans. Openings, because they must be wrought, are more likely to win you the game than endings. In my way of playing, I always take it as it comes. Endings are important, but one should not be playing towards them unless they are in sight. I think the one problem I have with endings is their rote, exactness. I often steer the game towards knight endings if I have a choice, as they are the most creative endings.

Actually Nakamura has given up his garbage openings AFAIK and that is probably largely responsible for his surge over 2800 and to #2

His "zero advantage" openings aren't actually zero advantage. Carlsen probably thinks more deeply about the opening than any player out there. He knows that what people consider drawish is not actually. My teacher likes how he plays white so much that he has taken to emulating him from time to time.

He plays the Scandy like this:

And the dragon like this:

None of these lines are drawish, or they don't have to be. Carlsen's genius has redefined the word "draw".

@Penrose I do not care much for "appearances", I care for truth. And Carlsen believes his opening play to be truth. Just because his openings are in a way grotesque doesn't mean they are bad openings. Bent Larsen is Carlsen's stylistic predecessor, and Bent's grotesque vision of chess is beginning to seep through with Carlsen. The opening is really important though, my predecessor, Tal, is an interesting study in how openings are really important to focus on. Tal was a master of timing, a skill that only matters in the opening, so he had to get to work quick. I think there are a lot of lines in the woodwork that people don't understand and I hope one day I may get a chance to use them. 

@BetterOffSingle

Do you want to play dude? I kind of want an online practice partner as crazy as me. Hell I would kill to practice hundreds of games with one person.

You are free to disagree. But people are usually the opposite of how they are perceived. Carlsen is inspired by Bent Larsen, its very clear. But I am not the progenitor of that idea, one Cyrus Lakdawala is, and I think I agree. Bent Larsen's chess book was the first that Carlsen ever read, and he espouses some of Bent's unorthodox openings, but does so intuitively. Actually I find Carlsen's intuition to be his most critical aspect. It perhaps portends certain things of a coming age that we will not discuss here, but will understand. Also, yes, Tal was extremely good in the opening and by the time he played Botvinnik he was already well-versed in a number of openings that he pioneered original and inventive lines for. Tal's attacks were inherently sound, you must understand that the basis for them had to be built in the opening and have the endgame in mind. Not that he would take all of it into account at once, he was renowned for his spontaenity because he took as it came to him.

"Every now and then someone advances the idea that one may gain success in chess by using shortcuts. 'Chess is 99% tactics' - proclaims one expert, suggesting that strategic understanding is overrated; 'Improvement in chess is all about opening knowledge' - declares another. A third self-appointed authority asserts that a thorough knowledge of endings is the key to becoming a master; while his expert-friend is puzzled by the mere thought that a player can achieve anything at all without championing pawn structures.

To me, such statements seem futile. You can't hope to gain mastery of any subject by specializing in only parts of it. A complete player must master a complete game ..." - FM Amatzia Avni (2008)

Tragicomedy in the Endgame: Instructive Mistakes of the Masters (2011) by Mark Dvoretsky

http://www.thechessmind.net/blog/2011/8/6/dvoretskys-tragicomedy-in-the-endgame-a-brief-review.html

There are tennis players, who rely mostly their big serve and they win with that. Then there are players who has weak serve but still playing well: they have other strengths. The same is translated chess language: try to use your own strengths against your opponent's weaknesses which ever it then is: the opening or middle game or even both good enough. (And don't take me too seriously, i'm terrible in chess and newbie, but I like to read this Forum and participate...)

Oh. You actually believe in the Dunning Krueger effect. I guess Kasparov and Fischer and Capablanca are worse than your namesake Penrose. Even Lasker believed he was the goddamn best in the world when he was, and Lasker was notable for his humility and apprenticeship in all things. 

The best players have extreme confidence, and I am to be one of the best players that will ever live, as bold a statement as that may seem. Despite this ousting of my inner ego that you have prompted me to display, I don't think any of my ideas are unfounded but that they differ from yours. What I find happens on the internet is people just cite things they don't understand(such as your dunning-kreuger effect reference, which, by the way, is the plague-epistle of every nerd everywhere in internet arguments, so nothing new), or they go for the throat by citing ratings(Even though ratings are hardly a valid indicator of any kind of skill.). You may think my grip on reality is poor, but it is clear to me that your grip on chess and life in general is mundane or lacking. This is for no reason other than you will not listen to what I have said. I took the time to understand your points and allowed you to have them, but when you start to point those points at me wherever you go is beyond the scope of valid reason. You are a fraud. Yes. This is all you are, and I am not so angry that I will blaspheme you with declarations of "jerk" and "know-nothing". But this is what you seem to be. Perhaps I should look further though, as now you may grasp my point that what seems is not is, though what seems can trick one into thinking that is so.

You've lost all my respect sir penrose. Go to hell.

the neccesary first insult has been met!  an all-out-troll war can begin.

but the real question is, should it begin? 

I for one am a Patzer and absolutely NOT "one of the best chess players that will ever live". 

but ... its a strange boast.  do you want ot explain why we should believe you? 

Because I can do anything I set my mind to. That is all.

an apt metaphor Nonetheless.  surely you must agree , op, that some really strong gm's focus more on their openings than other, equally rated gm's.

I don't mind emphatic personal declarations- ( I have my own actually ). but surely you MUST agree that there are alternate ways to get to the same rating.

Of course. But I think opening is the most important part of chess. I spend most of my time in games playing the first 10 moves. After that, I spend less time. But the way the pieces are developed and looking for the spaces to deviate from the norm are my main concern. I find that this has made my game unstoppable, especially today I won all my games after the first cause I got so mad when I didn't play the opening correctly. 

The opening is really important. There would be way too much to think about if you didn't know your openings well. OP is spot on! Oooops! looks like the doods are trolling though :(

I can see both points. I simply think if you feel weak in the opening and you feel comfortable working on it then go ahead. For such a person it's the most important stage of the game to study.

Then again, learning openings is just learning openings. Learning endgames will improve your play in almost every aspect of the game. From studying endgames you'll develop (for example) a good understanding/feeling of the strengths and weaknesses of your pieces. 

If you read the soltis book on pieces and their relative strengths, you'll realize that the strengths of the pieces are an illusion relative to the endgame. The more factors there are in the game, the harder it is to generalize the piece strengths and in that case one must rely on their actual grasp of piece power. I happen to understand pieces and their shifting power levels very well, which is precisely why I favor openings and middlegames over endings.

yeah, endgames are the pearl of chess! but openings are more important becos you can bust up a noob real bad without needing a middle game or an endgame.