Why study endgames first?

Doesn't it make mor sense to study openings, then middlegame and finally ending. If you make mistakes in th opening, you ar unlikely to have an equal middlegame and if you dont play th middlegame well then th ending will be lost no mattr how much you have practiced it.

it's better to study endgames first (beside tactics) because:

1. you learn the effectiveness and coordination of your pieces

2. you learn to calculate

3. you learn how important your pawns are and how to handle them

4. you can often score in games where your opponent is ahead, if you have better endgame knowledge

5. you learn how to play the middlegame in relation to specific endgame situations (where to put your pieces, which pieces to exchange)

6. you don't have to look for a winning combination the whole time and don't have to force the win (it often will end badly) because you can easily lead over to the endgame, simplify the position etc.

In the endgame, the scarcity of pieces means that your men take on relatively strong flavors. You can't really appreciate a rook until the paths of glory are opened for its great swooping assaults after the forest of pawns is thinned out...and EVERY piece exhibits characteristics that you will otherwise miss.

Studying the endgame will make you a better middle-game player because it will sharpen your ability to see ahead.

You can't recover from an endgame mistake.  You can recover from a middlegame or opening mistake.

That's a total lie. It all depends on the mistake, and closer to what you were thinking of, how strong your opponent is / how good their knowledge of the specific phase is.

Unless you were talking about simple or pawnless endgames. 

Checkmate is the whole purpose of the game, and in a well-played game, it comes at the end.

In simplest terms, the endgame usually comes down to someone getting a passed pawn and turning it into a queen. And then the queen delivers a knockout blow with checkmate. But if you don't know how to mate with a king and queen, for instance, getting the passed pawn is worthless.

You have to study the basic mating patterns rook and queen, and you have to study some basic techniques (the opposition, for instance) when marching your pawns down the board. Such knowledge will help you immeasurably in all the other aspects of the game as well.

To make a golf analogy, openings are shots off the tee, and endgames are putting. Everyone loves to hammer that drive down the fairway, but the green is where the games are won and lost. Nuff said.

Okay, but you still must know how to convert a winning endgame. This is much more important than knowing how to get a +0.5 position if you can't capitalize off that.  

Yes, of course... That's not what you said in your post though. You made a blanket statement which is very misleading. Saying small mistakes in the can be recovered from more easily in the opening rahter than in (complicated) endgames would have provoked no reply from me, even if it still isn't a good explanation for why learning endgames is so much more important than openings.

Yes, sorry I exaggerated the importance of endgames. But, he endgame is definitely more important to study in the beginning.  You can just follow opening principles for a while before knowing much theory.  A general rule of thumb is to know about 

your rating / 200 = moves in opening theory you should know

Studying skeleton/stripped down basic positions, will help improve your game. You will be able to see winning lines easier by knowing those patterns. They are end game positions generally. Being able to see a passed pawn on a wing when the opponents king can't get to it, can indeed help you win numerous games. 

Also by knowing such patterns/positions, it will help you in the opening, and middle game play as well. True calculation, and correct analysis of a position is still necessary, but with more experience, it will, at least for most become easier to see winning lines earlier, and further ahead.

Another example is 2 connected passed pawns on the 6th rank, against a lone rook. If it is the person that has the pawn's move, he will queen one of the pawns, the lone rook can not stop that from happening whether the rook is in front or behind, or even on the sides of the pawns. Not everyone knows that. Maybe most people on chess.com, but definitely most beginners do not.

So that is a simple endgame to win usually. However, queen vs rook endgames are not always won. So there is always exceptions to everything, and you need to know them, to improve your play.

I don't like studying rook endgames. Because they are hard. However most endgames come down to rooks playing against each other. So to improve, you need to study them.

You also need to study all the basic mating patterns, with all the pieces ( every different piece combo, IE.. Queen and knight, Rook and knight, etc.), in different positions. This will help you learn how to coordinate your pieces better. These are all endgames ( because check mate ends the game, and is the ultimate strategic goal of every game you play, unless you would rather have a loss or draw ). They can come about in the middle game, and in some cases in the opening part as well, thats why you should study end games, that doesn't mean not to study anything else.

Good luck.

One way to look at this is that there are many strong players who aren't that great at opening theory. I would consider myself one of these people. However, there is no strong player who can't convert a winning endgame advantage.

That being said, I agree completely with Danny Rensch's belief that board visualization is the single most important skill for a chess player to develop. If you can't, for instance, point out where the c7 and g2 squares are on a board without coordinates, or if you can't identify which color those squares are without looking at a board, then those are bigger problems for you than any problems you may have involving the opening, middlegame, or endgame.

you must have an idea of where you want the game to go, and why

Strategically speaking, opening moves only make sense in the context of a middle game and middle game moves only make sense in the context of an endgame.  You can memorize opening moves, but you'll have no idea why they're any good until you understand middle games.

You can read a strategy book on the middle game but you'll only be getting half the picture if you don't know endgames.

So for study, as in buy a book and read it, it's best to start with endgames.  For beginners even more important is to play many games at slow time controls and analyze them and talk to stronger players.  Also very useful are tactical puzzles.

But again when you set aside time to study the game (e.g. book study) it really makes sense to start with endgames.

If we were teaching computers, then we should begin with the endgames. 

Since we're teaching humans, we should give the students a good mix of opening and endgame play. If there were some ideal student who never got bored of chess, the ideal way to teach that person would be from the endgame to the opening. But since there's no such thing, teach students what will interest them.  

Endgames are interesting, but if a student never gets to use his endgame knowledge because he's losing to four-move mates, he'll give up. 

Teach a mix of openings, tactics, strategy, and endgames. 

most games get to the endgame...fewer won  in the opening or middle

because you have to know what you are playing for.

yes, how to transpose from middle to a won winnable endgame  

Although in a short-term perspective, studying endgames may seem superfluous, what many people neglect is that studying the endgame is a very good way to develop overall chess skills such as :

- raw calculation ability

- taking into account what the opponent is going to do (very important even in basic endgames) => prophylactic thinking

- planning (through schematic thinking and targeting standard positions)

It also helps to develop a feel for what every piece can do or not do.

there's a law of diminishing returns. So the most efficient way is to study all aspects of the game equally. It's also the most pleasant way.