The Reason the Study of Openings is Important

My guess is that the average game played on chess.com is either winning or losing before the 18th move.

By this I mean that there are many errors in most games and very often one side or the other has made a big enough error to be losing before the 18th move.

When I say a game is "losing" it means even with the best possible play by the side with the inferior game--he should lose against correct play...

Thus if you know whatever opening you are in--the less chance that you will be the first to make a losing mistake.

Amen! Well said my brother. I agree

true, but thats with best play, which just doesnt exist in lower levels. So often the losing positions have very little impact on the game

Players seeking to improve can do well learning openings, but it's time consuming, especially learning all the variations. The ideas behind them are more improtant. I have methods to shortcut your opening study time and get your opponent  out of what he knows and into what you know. They are given in Lesson005 of my free video lessons course, available on my website. You can fnd that on the "about me" porion of my profile here.

So how did you get at your 'algorithm' of 18 moves then?

True enough though, that studying openings may lead to some type of advantage for either (or perhaps both - i.e. equality) Black or White - albeit, often only a temporary advantage, rather than a lasting one - does there not exist the possibility for some type of draw outcome to result as a direct 'consequence' from incorrect or inaccurate opening play as well? (i.e. when you state above that " ... a game [Black or White] is losing ... ")

I am saying that in most games one side or the other makes a severe enough

mistake that the other side should win with best play.

If you play incorrectly and make mistakes then you will very probably get a position which is losing sometime in the first 18 moves of the game.

To give an example--take at random 10 games and analy them I would guess at least 8 of them would have the situation where somebody made a severe enough mistake to lose [and that mistake was in the first 18 moves].  

The game of chess is a draw if nobody makes  mistake. But as we are all human--mistakes happen.

Actually my guess of a serious mistake happening some time in the first 18 moves is a very conservative estimate--I might have said in the first 16 moves.  How do I "know" this?  My 63 years of chess experience and analyzing my own games and then taking into consideration that the average player will make more mistakes than say a master...