bad chess advice (openings? cringe!)

"Under 2200, you don't need to know openings. Just a few moves of the opening(s) of your choice, and you are set".

Like all sweeping generalizations, advice that is in the format of this is always bad, and always wrong. But instead about nitpicking about "well Bobby learned 5 million openings and became a grandmaster at age 2!" to prove statements like these wrong, we can simply prove that it is more reasonable to doubt this than it is to believe it. 

First off, it is without a doubt that you can get by with randomly playing moves in the opening at, let's say, 300 elo and still win. Because reasons. The reasons are not important; I'm sure we can all agree on this. But then at, let's say, 1300, these get a bit weird. Hell, even at 2100... 

I won that game. Does it prove that you can play whatever you want at 2100 and still win? NO! It does not prove that you can do whatever the hell you want and still win, just like how if I hang my queen, it does not prove that I am likely to hang my queen every game!

So the first problem with this argument is that it kinda assumes every rating below the arbitrary rating it sets is to be the same, and obviously 300 rating and 1300 rating are not the same... 

But to REALLY refute this argument, we have to think deeper. WHY is this advice given? Well, it's often given to people who want to study openings. The logic being that you save more time by studying less openings and more on chess. Of course, this is true... to a certain rating.

Let's say we have Joe, who improves from 1100 to 2200. Raise your hand if you think he doesn't study much openings the entire time. Now raise your hand if you think that, SOMEWHERE along the line of improvement, he seriously cracks the books, or the chessable, or whatever needs to be cracked to study some openings, and spends many hours over a long period of time studying openings. 

This illustrates the main point: while there EXIST people who are in the former category, ON AVERAGE, more people will be in the second category (and I'd bet it's an overwhelming majority!)

Because it is simply true that whether you commit to studying openings at 1100 or 2100, you are gonna study openings. 

Now some people may argue against this. You might say that it's easier to comprehend openings at 1800 than it is at 1100. Thus, you will have saved time studying openings; as it is likely that an 1100 looking at the opening will understand less things about it than when you're 1800. Thus, it is likely that if you start studying early, you will spend redundant time looking at the same material.

Another argument is that just because a majority of people exist in the second category does not prove that it is good; Instead, it only proves what is popular, and thus what is pushed towards improving players. 

It is easier to respond to the second counterargument, so I will do that first. This argument is a sort of non-argument. Sure, it is "possible" that this is not necessarily good. But chess has been around for hundreds of years, and you could reasonably expect that what a majority of good chess players did to improve should be seen as something to be emulated. Since this argument can neither be proven nor disproven, we can only rely on reasoning to determine which is more likely the case. And I would be inclined to believe that what the majority does to improve at a hundreds of years old board game to be a good choice, not a bad one.

Now, the first counterargument, which is about saving time. I will start this off with a personal example: When I was 1300, I picked up a book on the Alekhine's defense. I spent the time to learn it, and played it from 1300 to 2200. Along the way, I had a roughly 60% score as black against e4 with this defense, a pretty good score. 

Now, did I need to re-read sections of the book as I improved? Yes. But we must look at this another way: if I had not spent the time to learn the alekhine's defense, or any defense at all, and instead simply played on principle, would I have ever even made it to 2200?

Now back to the counterargument, being that the 1800 would have greater comprehension than the 1100, thus saving time. But can you prove beyond reasonable doubt that the time saved from NOT studying openings is outweighed by the time saved from getting easier games?

Or in other words, the 700 points between 1100 and 1800. How much time would you be wasting if you never learned a proper opening somewhat decently? Several hours? Maybe more? At least with studying openings, you are not always studying strictly the opening moves. If you're studying properly (which is what I will be assuming for all instances of "studying openings" I say here) then you should be learning ideas and principles behind said moves; developing your thinking skills as well as learning patterns and possible tactics in the opening.

Obviously, when you learn an opening decently well, then you get favorable positions, and thus have an easier time winning than if you just played willy nilly moves. A fun side effect of not trying to learn openings is that you may dislike the middlegame, and not even know it! For example, when I was 800 my games went something like this:

which often resulted in an incredibly boring game and often everyone tried the exact same tactic (Bg5/4 followed by Nd5/4). It wasn't until I looked into italian game theory that I saw the plan of Nc3-e2-g3, followed up by slowly building up on the kingside. This demonstrates how you can learn more than just the opening moves from the opening, which can offer you benefits in departments more than just the opening.

There are other arguments for this stance, too; for example learning openings early provides consistency, consistency lowers the amount of variables that someone needs to know, thus allowing them to take their mind off the opening more and focus on the chess aspect of the game, which is ironically why anyone would argue against learning openings.

As a result, it's more likely that learning openings will save you more time in the long run. And even if it doesn't, it's likely to be about the same amount of time as if you didn't learn an opening. 

Of course, the "Right time" to learn an opening would vary from person to person, and it can be argued whether or not there even is a "right time" to learn openings, etc etc. Which all goes to show that nothing is ever black and white, and generalizations are bad, which brings me back to the whole point:

Generalization bad. The advice presented is a generalization. Therefore advice bad.