You should study openings

I think the common adage of "don't study openings, only learn the rules of the opening" is said far too often. 

 

I think this matters only at the very beginning stages of chess. Say under: 1200-1300. Anything above that I think it's important to pick some openings you're comfortable with and practice them far enough to get a good playable position. 

 

My theory on this is that if you meet a 1300 who knows their openings better than you, you are going to be fighting from a bad position the whole game right from the get-go. You both will blunder, but at least he will enjoy his game more having the better position and he is more likely to succeed. 

 

An example of how knowing your opening makes the difference is this game where a 1700 beats a GM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91tbGuKVZWk

 

It's because the GM changed his opening and didn't know the variation he played against the 1700. Knowing to navigate your opening choices and patterns is critical.

 

 

In my opinion... you should study your openings.

 

Study them enough enough to where you will get playable positions. Chessable.com is a great resource for that. 

 

I'm questioning this common phrase and assumption. 

 

"If you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."

I've found in OTB tourney play, at the amateur level, one player goes out of book within 4-6 moves. The longest I've had was 10 or so moves by transposition.

 

Knowing the moves in a opening is only going to help if you know why the moves are normally played and can understand what to do when your opponent deviates. Add to that, the number of different branches that are possible, the adage to not study openings makes sense, to a certain point.

 

Understanding principles will go much farther, for most people sub-expert players, than memorizing concrete variations.

 

When I started playing yahoo chess in 2001 I didn't know much more about openings other than playing 1. E4 was a good opening move for white because it staked a claim in the center, which is what you wanted to control. Had I of known a little more about general opening moves for the first couple of moves at least, I wouldn't have gone through yahoo chess just experimenting with different openings and losing a whole heck of a lot. Maybe my poor opening knowledge wasn't the only problem back then though!

"If you want to play chess competitively, then you must develop an opening repertoire." - GM Patrick Wolff (1997)

One possible place to start is with the book, Discovering Chess Openings by GM John Emms.

"Throughout the book Emms uses excellently chosen examples to expand the readers understanding of both openings and chess in general. Thus equipped the student can carry this knowledge forward to study individual openings and build an opening repertoire. ... For beginning players, this book will offer an opportunity to start out on the right foot and really get a feel for what is happening on the board." - FM Carsten Hansen, reviewing the 2006 Emms book

https://web.archive.org/web/20140627114655/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen91.pdf

It depends on what your definition of learning openings is.... If you're just memorizing lines then as Day stated most lower rated players go out of book quickly. Then what? If on the other hand you're studying WHY moves are made in a specific opening, and the plans that arise from those moves, you're much better prepared for when a non-book move is made. You still know your plan, and you can adjust accordingly. I've been reading a couple books from the "Chess Explained" series. "Chess Explained the Mainline Slav" and the one on the Nimzo Indian. Also the Grandmaster Repertoire series on the Slav. Both are excellent in that they not only show "white moves here then black moves there".... but explain why and what the PLANS are for the various lines. Unlike many opening books I've read where it's basically just a data dump of variation after variation with no explanation of why a certain move is made or what the plan behind them is. Having a plan is far better than memorizing lines IMO. You can adjust a plan if your partner does something unexpected. Hard to adjust when all you've done is memorize lines..... 

An awareness of openings themes and basic traps is important. You get people who say they reached 1800 without any opening knowledge but in reality they will have become aware of the traps through playing a lot of games and that counts as opening knowledge. You can either learn it through experience, books or ideally both.

In a 2006 GM John Nunn book, in connection with opening study, it is stated that, if a "book contains illustrative games, it is worth playing these over first", and the reader was also advised, "... I feel that the main reasons to buy an opening book are to give a good overview of the opening, and to explain general plans and ideas. ..."

As I mentioned I think knowing plans and ideas of openings will service you up around until 1200-1300.

After that, I feel you're going to need a opening repertoire that provides you with playable positions. So that will be knowing some theory.

I practical example is that I go to a local club and had not gone for a couple weeks. During those couple of weeks I had been really studying my openings and getting familiar with the exact lines and plans. 

Now a player I usually have a 50% win rate, I now have a 90% and if I lost, i still had the better position the whole game but happened to have lost on time. This is a 1800-1900 USCF player. 

Openings DO matter. 

The adage of don't study them goes away (IMO) at around 1200-1300. At that point, if you want to strengthen your game.... practice your openings!

Have the better position out of the gate at the start of the game.

1400-level player advising a 1000-level player: you really need to stop studying openings and work on tactics and basic endgames ... until you get to my level.

1800-level player advising a 1400-level player: you really need to stop studying openings and work on tactics and basic endgames ... until you get to my level.

Master advising a 1800-level player: you really need to stop studying openings and work on tactics and basic endgames ... until you get to my level.

GM advising a master: all openings are sound below the GM-level.

Maybe IM Pfren (and Michael de la Maza, heh heh) is right about opening study being a waste of time for below-master patzers.

Learn how your opening choices relate to the endgame. Which openings lead to which pawn structures, etc. After you find what you're comfortable with, learn the theory, but don't get obsessed with it. You'll find yourself in a playable middlegame with more concrete plans. Just MHO.

"If you want to play chess competitively, then you must develop an opening repertoire." - GM Patrick Wolff (1997)

 

This is the common rhetoric that I now strongly disagree with. You won't make it to a playable endgame or middlegame if you can't get a decent opening.

That rhetoric is spouted as common knowledge and the suggested path, but I strongly disagree.

"If you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."

People can say a lot of things. The main thing is you know enough to get a playable position. If your opponent is just developing without putting any pressure, that is just great for you. You can do the same and you don't need to know anything. I started out with nothing fancy, always playing 1.e4 e5. If you play 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 you need to know the Italian with c3 and d4 or someone is going to steamroll you. That is unless you dare to play the two knights, but then you're certainly getting hammered if you don't know the Ng5 line. I've had people play the two knights with d4 (threatening e5 a la the max lange attack or something along those lines) against me also. That's a real picnic the first time you get it on the board. Of course, you're also going to get the Spanish with black even if you avoid it with white. If you play d6 early to defend e5 because you have no idea what you're doing it's just bad. Now, if you actually have to memorize when the black e5 pawn can be taken and when the white e4 pawn can be taken and what you actually need to play against all that it is very confusing! (Remember I was a child at the time) This is just an example; I can list a lot more in the Spanish alone. My point is: If you don't know anything you're going to get hammered, even by little children. With that I'm not saying you need to know openings like a GM. If you add everything up just to get by it's still quite a bit though! 

But thats exactly what I do NOT want to do: play chess competitively.

 

Humans developed games to spend free time in a non-boring, but hopefully interesting or even exiting way.

I expect no more than that from chess.

 

Even if I spent tons of time to "properly" learn opening theory this would only result in the first 20 book moves out of a 40 moves game becoming boring and non-exiting again.

Basically I'd have spent hard work to make half of my future game time unexiting.

 

No, thanks: I should NOT study openings.

"... I feel that the main reasons to buy an opening book are to give a good overview of the opening, and to explain general plans and ideas. ..." - GM John Nunn (2006)

Because you haven't played in a USCF rated game in at least 10+ years. 

No one with a 2100+ Blitz and Bullet rating on chess.com has a playing strength of 1500 USCF. 

And... with a 2100+ rating, you DO know quite a bit of openings. You may not know the Najdorf like the back of your hand, but you know a lot. 

 

The whole premise of my post is that the common advice given to those wanting to improve (be more competitive) should not study openings and instead focus on tactics. 

So if you don't want to improve. Don't study openings. Do your own thing. But if you do want to improve and be more competitive. I think you should IMO

With the recent article here on chess.com I agree that it's patterns and one of the ways to understand patterns is to know your openings, and you start to recognize more patterns.

This is maybe the biggest debate in chess, and is often argued about, but that doesn't make it any less interesting.

What the novice player needs first is an understanding of the goals of the opening phase in general and to see manifold examples where poor opening play was punished -- from simplest to more subtle. First things like Scholar's Mate (four-move checkmate) and why it happens; then other games where one side loses quickly in the opening due to undeveloped pieces/king in the center; after that, games where the losing player moves one or two pieces too much and gets outnumbered; followed by games where the loser develops their pieces, but badly, and gets an awful position (notice here though that already they should survive to move 15-20); then games where the loser allows the opponent too much space or too free development.

We're starting with blowouts and proceding to the simply bad, step by step. The learning player starts to see the difference in the magnitude of mistakes a player can make, and it is tuning their "compass" for how to play openings in their own games.

Once the learner is developing their pieces and castling in a sensible way, they are ready to learn some specific openings -- I teach my students with White to open with 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 and assuming 2...Nc6, they can choose which move they like from 3.Nc3, 3.Bc4, 3.d4, and 3.Bb5. Then I begin teaching them some basics and showing them some simple games/strategy in their chosen opening. With Black, my students answer 1.e4 with 1...e5 and can choose from the Two Knights (if they are willing to study), or the Guioco Piano, or the Hungarian Defense (if they like it OR if they are simply lazy).

When going over their games, we discuss how to take advantage of opponent mistakes and they start to get better and better at it. 

Seeing the pluses/minuses of a move...that's the ticket.

My students are VERY good at playing openings sensibly...I have a young student who is rated about 600, and someone played 1...c5 against her in a tournament recently -- for the first time. She played 2.Nf3, 3.Nc3, 4.Bc4, and 5.0-0 followed by 6.d3, etc. and got a solid advantage.

Opening study is indispensible -- but it must be approached in a methodical way. Of course simply memorizing moves won't help. 

I feel it is a good idea to study openings so that the main principles are understood.  Looking at the "mainlines" is fine, but generally most players, at least at lower levels, aren't going to follow the mainlines after a few moves.  So understanding why moves are played and why your opponents moves aren't the mainlines (ie good ways to exploit them) is helpful.

It seems to me that playing just a few openings also lets you better understand the eventual positions that these openings get to better each time you play them.  You'll learn the tricks your opponents try to play against you, which moves are good or bad at which times, what generally areas of your structure are weak points and how to properly defend them and so on.  Just developing and basing it all on opening theory will likely lead to different enough situations every time that you won't be understanding the positions and what both you and your opponent seek from them.