You don't need an opening reportoire until you hit 2000 ELO - ture or false ?

I had no idea about that. I thought that the opening was very important for low rated players. I heard Peter Svidler saying that the main difference between a low and a high rated GM was the opening knowledge.

I think someone pointed out earlier that there are opening theory and opening reportoire are 2 different things. At the point of GM, I would imagine theory is key.

Under 2000, I would think less theory and more knowledge of openings would be more beneficial.

Personally, for now, I really only learn enough to know the middle game plans and overcome opponents who attempt to play 'out of the book'.

A lot of vague words like knowledge, theory and reportoire can be thrown around. I think it is important when someone makes a statement about the benefits of opening study, it is important to clarify what aspect of opening study they are talking about.

1 b3 is =; 1...b6 is +/=, so not so bad...

The closest I can think of is Michael De La Maza.

I agree that themes and structures are important.

"There are many games I lost that I wouldn't have, if I knew some opening lines better."

I can't really say the same to be honest. When I was 1900 USCF up to now, opening lines have started to influence the result of the game, but I could never say more than that. And even in those cases it's more about my understanding or lack thereof regarding the plans -- I can't even remember a single time where I needed to know a specific move, that I wouldn't be able to find if I knew the goals of the opening.

Anything below 1900 USCF, speaking from my personal experience, it almost all seemed to just depend on my play, me being stupid or not being stupid regarding the decisions I made or blunders I tried to avoid.

Granted I don't play 1 e4 or, say, the sicilian defense, which may have affected things. But even in so called "tricky" lines like the albin counter gambit (1 d4 d5 2 c4 e5) or budapest gambit against 1 d4, all I do is go by certain development schemes and the most basic of ideas that can be learned in literally minutes. For example, in the albin I give back the pawn, fianchetto my king's bishop, and at some point (again, I'm not so concerned with precisely when) expand on the queenside with a3 and b4. I just find the moves from there, assess my opponent's attack, and things work just fine.

I feel like on one hand sometimes opening knowledge does help, and yet other times we have guys like Carlsen who show disdain for knowing tons of precise moves. I just would never consider specific opening knowledge even close as important to other aspects of the game, at least at my level (expert) and those below me, and, whatever benefit I may get from opening knowledge, could easily be replaced with just better chess knowledge.

I would say the importance of opening knowledge is, overall, low -- in some moments not as low as usual, other times really low, but to me the average always comes out as "low." Low doesn't mean trivial, of course. "Low" is still enough to include it in your studies, but it is simply the least important part of the game.

It is worth pointing out that, if opening study makes you learn more about chess, then it can be categorized as another "general" way of learning chess. My above post was more addressing learning openings for the sake of finding the right moves in that particular opening.

It seems like what you really "need" (or maybe what would be "ideal"...) is knowledge and understanding of openings that is on par with what players at one's own level "typically" know and understand.  There are many ways to get to almost any level, so there are always going to be people at any level who are "atypical."  For example, someone can be tactical a monster but weak on openings and play at the same overall level as others who are more balanced in those areas.

For someone who is trying to learn about all aspects of the game, I think all you really should strive for is to be on a par with one's peers.  If you improve, your peer group will change by virtue of being more accomplished.  "Typically" they will know more about openings and you will too.  At 1200 that understanding might be at the "knights before bishops" level and knowing the first 5-6 moves of a few main lines, while at 2000 one might expect a substantial knowlege of specific opening lines and an understanding of opening principles coupled with understanding of the arising middle games of the opening one plays. 

As for "repertoires," all that means is the openings one plays at the level at which one plays them.  Nothing more, nothing less.  At any elementary school level tournament a huge number of games start:

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bc4 Bc5 5.d3 d6

And now it's time for the game to actually begin...  That's the entire opening repertoire (Black and White!) of many of those kids, but a repertoire it is!  And for absolute beginners it's quite appropriate.

I noticed the one week I studied some opening lines, I played way better. I wasn't falling into the traps I usually fall into. Sometimes it's tough for an intermediate player to come back after being in such a tight spot coming out of the opening. Even lower rated players can make an opening advantage turn into a middlegame and endgame advantage. Of course, if the other player plays much stronger moves in the middle/endgame, it won't help as much or at all. But we're talking about the same level moves in mid/endgame.

I still fall for the fried liver attack sometimes because I don't remember the best way to defend against it. If I sat down and learned that cold, I feel like I'd add 50 points to my rating. (So why don't I do that? Because I'm lazy and I don't care that much about chess.)

false

i don't use any opening repetoire when I play battleship.  I just place the ships on the water platform and then start calling out the moves.

Actually vending machines is a form of battleship where everyone wins:

A8:  Doritos!

B12: Candy Bar

C17: Bottle of soda!

I think the confidence you get from knowing an opening is the biggest factor towards playing a better game, not knowing the opening itself.  If there's anything I've learned in my fledgling chess career, it's that openings don't matter.  I just played in a tournament this weekend where I faced some opening that I didn't know at all, but I still won.  Why?  Because I had better tactics in the middle game.

The sooner you stop being afraid of the unknown, the better you'll be able to handle it.  Sure you might fall into some deep opening trap occasionally, but it's actually pretty rare if you have good tactical vision and make solid, logical opening moves.  So what if you don't get a +.30 eval out of the opening as white.  You're not playing Kasparov, you're playing another amateur.

The word "need" in the title of this thread just obscures.  The real question is what the best use of time is given the players improvement goals.

Its probably true that you dont "need' an opening repetoire until 2000.  But it would sure be a heck of a lot easier to get there if you have one.  

You're correct. A good opening can only help you get to a playable position. It is no guarantee you will score the point.

That's not to say that I don't prepare openings.  I'm very booked up on my opening lines, but I only spend about 5% of my time actually studying openings.  I have my repertoire against the most common openings I see.  When I run into a new one I look it up in a repertoire book and add it to my knowledge.  But I don't spend all day learning 20 moves deep in every variation of the King's Indian.   

If you read a lot of annotated master games, that's a good enough crash course in various openings that you'll be prepared for the ones you don't see regularly.

I think you should have a repertoire.  Whether that's mainline queen's gambit or a system like Nimzo-Larsen, you should have prepared openings for White and a defense for Black against e4, d4 and Reti/English systems.  You don't need to be 20 moves deep in every possibility, just look and see what the main lines are.  You'll get good opening knowledge just from going over your games to see where you or your opponent deviated from theory and how you could do better next time. 

Get a good survey on the openings, like the Watson book so you can get an idea of what the main lines are and why they're the main lines.  But if you're the guy who is 1300 who buys 3 books on the Ruy Lopez hoping one has the secret to winning all games by move 15, you're doing it wrong.

"Even lower rated players can make an opening advantage turn into a middlegame and endgame advantage."

I disagree pretty strongly with this, although I think a different and similar point could be made. And that is if you have a bad position it can be a lot harder to play since the tactics don't favor you in inferior positions. That is the sort of thing that started to happen, as I mentioned, starting around 1900 USCF, not so much before. At any time before that, it seemed like I was in control of my fate -- if I just didn't blunder and my opponent did before me, I could get through an inferior opening position. And I could also mess up a good opening position that easily. Of course, a lot of strategy does go on in games of people under 1900; the thing is though, at that level it's still very easy to mess up 15 moves of a well played plan with just one or two miscalculations or in more minor cases inaccuricies that suddenly allow counterplay. Or worst, just not have a good enough understanding of the endgame. And then when you're in time pressure, etc etc, it can be anyone's game...

As I said though I haven't played either side of 1 e4 e5 for a long time, nor do I play 1 e4 in general, so that could affect things. Although I suspect not by a huge amount.

Another thing I forgot- if you go through opening books, a lot of times you'll find evaluations, either numerical or in symbols: =, +/-, etc. By move 12 of a certain line the book may say White's winning because he has a pawn for nothing, or the game is a draw. An example is in the Mackenzie-Pruess game I mentioned earlier, where someone mentioned that it would have been a draw had Black played 8. Ke8. If I were offered a draw in that position, I would have said "No thanks" before my opponent could finish his sentence.

And in those positions that are supposedly winning for one side based on a one pawn advantage or a positional plus, I would never consider resigning at my level. Middlegame technique is really important and winning a pawn in the opening is almost useless if you can't navigate the middlegame.

Here's an example- I lost a pawn like an idiot on move 7. That morning I had played one of the best games of my life and after lunch and a nap I just started out on a terrible note. Even after going a pawn down for almost nothing I kept fighting and won the pawn back about ten moves later. Any grandmaster would resign after hanging a center pawn like that but it never crossed my mind. My immediate thought was "Let's get back into this and get back that material". That's a case of the "book evaluation" having no influence on a practical decision, which is really common among us class players.

lol thats probably the reason why 5.d3 gets more and more popular ;)

openings  are not needed

just play chess

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