Why Chess Endings are FAR MORE IMPORTANT than Chess Openings

The midgame enthusiasts ?!

Yes indeed, "smart kids and adults" can reach USCF 1800 with only minimum endgame knowledge.

After that, it's probably time to reinvent yourself -- largely because in the "A Class" and higher, players are increasingly strong with the black pieces and in the endgame, and your opening prep doesn't help nearly as much.

Many local OTB tournaments divide the Upper Section from Lower Section at USCF 1800. Most people don't realize that USCF 1800 is the 90th percentile of U.S. tournament players, and (more importantly), the upper 10 percent of players account for 50 percent of the tournament games played.

If your not playing OTB Games at 5-6 hour speeds, (which provides lots of time to calculate and move), then you better "imbide and know cold," lots of strategic endgame themes, othewise you'll invariably run short on time.  This applies to all time controls of Game in 60/5, or faster.

Endgame knowledge helps take the "stupidity" and "blundering" out of chess -- because it helps you to play strategically, and effectively, at much higher speeds.  You can play "faster and cleaner," with lots less mistakes.  Indeed, this was the OP's original proposition for this thread, fully seven months ago.  It still holds.

Even though many players 2000 and above my laugh at this, it's annoying to me how well 1800-1900 players can play.

Sure there is stupidity, ignorance, blunders, etc. But there are also some very solid games.

Anyway, just wanted to +1 the idea that these players are better than most people realize... IMO.

More or less, when I was rated ~1200, the proficiency I imagined GMs to have is basically what a 1900-1999 player actually is lol.

Funny you mention this - I'm having a similar feeling about weaker players, just not quite at the 2000 level you play at. 

I've gone from 1200 blitz to1550-1600 blitz in about 2 years of playing and studying. 

When I was 1200, 1400s seemed like amazing blunder-free machines with exceptional chess knowledge in all phases of the game. I pretty much never had a chance against them after a roughly equal opening. 1600s were literally gods - I literally had no chance, and the computer confirmed it - I'd make a small mistake , and then get worse and worse,quickly, with no counterchances. 

Now that I'm 1550-1600 blitz, I'm a more than a bit horrified with how small the gap is between myself at that 1200-level player I used to be. Sure, I could probably win the vast majority of games against my old 1200 self, but against similar-strengthed 1600 opposition, I'm back to blundering and clueless playing, not too dissimilar to how I felt and looked at 1200 vs 1200.

I'm also horrified as well at how well 1100-level blitz players play against me now. If I try and do 'banter blitz' like those youtube chess stars or some other mildly distracting task simultaneously, I can lose a fair number of games against them! And even when I do win, it's annoyingly frequent that they play super solid chess against me where I time them out but have like only a 20 centipawn advantage at the end. (CPU confirms their solid play as well.) 

It's really easy to think the folks that beat you are like orders of magnitude better, but at least for me, I'm finding out that the differences are a lot smaller than I'd thought when looking the reverse direction.

I know there is bias... lower rated players look up and see gods, higher rated players look down and see idiots... even though both groups are looking at the players in the middle.

Hmm, maybe I can say it this way... if a 1400 or 1500 is a solid pawn up for no compensation vs a peer they have good winning chances right? In some positions the game is basically over. In some positions, or against a GM, a pawn up doesn't matter, but against another 1450 in an endgame sometimes it's time to resign.

I guess I'm finding out that in some positions, and against peers, things I used to think were nearly meaningless can practically decide a game.

If you're looking for a class to laugh at an 1800-1900 player a 2000 isn't going to cut it. You'll have to look at at least a master. An 18-1900 can scalp a 2000 expert any given day, and not because the expert necessarily played poorly, either. But yes, I'd had the 1800 estimate given to me on my play a few times years back. I would play a player who was 1600 USCF and when I'd win he'd start throwing a tantrum claiming I played like a master. I admit I fell into similar traps when I just started playing chess regularly, thinking b class players were like masters, but that was before I'd played in tournaments. Now I know better, at least I hope I do. Lol

jengaias wrote:

There is no room for underestimation in chess.The more experienced the player the more he knows that.

If you underestimate a lower rated player you are doing him a huge favor.If he had any chance to get a good result , he just doubles it.

Yes but once you hit the 400 Elo gap or so the statistics heavily favor the higher rated player, whereas I bet the stats for games between 18-1900s and 2000s isn't bad at all. If an 1800 beats a master you start looking at possible factors to cause this. Perhaps the master didn't play his best game for a variety of reasons or the 1800s rating hasn't caught up to his strength increase in recent months. But a 2000 could play a very solid game and still lose to an 1800 and no one would be surprised.

Indeed. I knocked off an expert when my official rating was only 1560 (unofficially I was 1670 I think) and my real strength was much higher according to several experts at my club. He played his standard opening but ended up blundering a pawn. Possibly because he didn't think he had to look that deep against someone 500 points lower than him. I ended up winning another pawn towards the ending and completely out playing him to seal the deal. I explained that my rating was still provisional and he said "if I had known that I would have played something else". Lol

I beat a legit 1900+ in a fair heads-on UCSF rated game when I was 1340. And he played pretty much all-out - we did a postmortem and I asked him if he was trying out a new opening on me or something like that, but he said he always played what he played against me, and didn't hold back.  

Turns out though, the ONLY ability I had back then was chess tactics calculation, as I was doing a lot of the Michael de La Maza study approach - nothing but tactics. I and really mean NOTHING - no openings, no position, no fundamentals. It was really unbalanced. And no, it really didn't work - I was getting beat by weak players, hence the 1340 rating.

But the 1900 played the sharp gambit line in the French, and I played it pretty accurately, at least according to the computer. He made a small slip, and it was downhill from there. He even used every last second of his clock in desperation, but I still got him.  We reviewed the game with 2 experts+ afterwards, and my tactics were pretty much spot-on! Fortunately for me, that game required almost zero positional knowledge - it was ALL tactics (I didn't even get to castle and at one point his Q was a Ns jump from my K with a blown pawn cover.)

Then I lost to a 1250 the next week! And then got strangled to death by a 2000 who saw my tactics, and proceeded to play a closed game with zero tactics, where I felt like I was equal for like 40 moves, until I wasn't. 

Ironically, I'm no better at tactics now than I was back then but a lot higher rated in blitz thanks to bringing up the rest of my game.

¡Por favor, sea relevante, útil y agradable!

I lost to a provisional player like that once. Seriously didn't bother to calculate much.

Luckily I got a rematch a few weeks later, and in that game I beat him 

The scenarios i see at scholastic tournaments are always stalemate, and player aimlessly moving queens and rooks around unable to mate.  You never see them stuck in the opening.  If you dont know the basic mates, or how to avoid stalemate what good are openings?

"Obviously most adult players are above that level, but it is pretty amazing to play 1300-1700 rated players and arrive at an endgame. It feels like their playing strength just dropped off 200 points....................."

Not a truer statement has ever been made.  

My achive simply tells you that I don't have opening, middle game or even end game. But I still managed to reach 2000. :))

In my opinion, 2000 is relatively easy to get without much study. It's mostly just basic tactics and simple positional play up to that point—stuff players tend to learn on their own from playing and experience.

To get to 2200+, though, that's when I believe study starts to become important—both with endgames and openings.

Stands to reason that the endgame is more critical until a certain performance threshold. It doesn't take huge amount of experience to figure it out. The stronger the performance level, the more 'deterministic' the game becomes because the player skill reduces the element of chance.

Therefore, opening theory only really matters at very high level performance, when players can 'see' what's going to happen far ahead in the game, and potentially grab the victory earlier.

Below this point, games end at a much later stage.

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Wonder if there is a correlation between average game length and playing strength, the assumption being that stronger play results in shorter games on average. Just speculating, I don't know. Just because there's less redundancy at higher levels, it doesn't mean that games are shorter on average. Qualitative difference doesn't have to mean quantitative difference given the vast game-tree complexity.

Most superGM longchess game are more than 40 moves. I think I have more short games (40-) than them.

But games with huge difference in playingstrenght can often be the shortest ones.

Garry Kasparov considers each phase of the game namely opening, middle and end game of equal importance. Each player have a unique strength and weakness in each phase hence the need to identify and work on the weaknesses first. In general working on the endgames improves ones calculation skills something that would come in handy in every game.

The importance of openings need not be underestimated in my opinion,just take a look at the books on miniatures(opening catastrophes).The opening is a phase guaranteed to be played,the ending may or may not be reached.Therefore,I respectfully disagree with the title of this thread.I totally agree that a good,solid endgame knowledge is very very useful,however it wouldn't be worth much if a player were to neglect his\her opening and middlegame practice\study.I will also venture to say that most people's "Achilles' heel" is the middlegame.

Indeed. Most of us from the pre-engine days, knowing essential endgame themes, basic mates, common tactics/typical combos/sacs, positional concepts were unconditional. Basic opening principles, to me though, often challenged me. Of course, general advise was always you can make a mistake in the opening and survive...to go awry in the middleware or miscalculated tempo in the endgame can often be fatal. Soo I can understand some saying that okay, opening prep isn't vital.

I see it as this:

Most positional players strive for the endgame where their small advantages accumulated are actualized.

Using tactics with a positional aim pretty much the same thing.

Tactical players going all in on a mating attack don't necessarily care about material or endgame concerns. Ending up with a good bishop vs bad knight with pawns on both wings is often, "plan B". Heh. Meaning some positional compensation if the attack fails.