Analyse grandmaster games and/or games by slightly better players

I'm curious if you have an opinion on what a beginner to intermediate player (1200-1300 rating) can take out of grandmaster games and secondly if analysing games by slightly stronger players is worthwhile. 

when i was your rating, studying games helped a lot (it still does now). it can do more than one of the following:

• help you understand the structures that result from your opening 
• help you understand general plans from your openings
• help you understand different pawn breaks in different structures
• show some positional ideas you can apply in your games
• demonstrate certain key principles (eg. principle of two weaknesses)
• provide examples on attacking/defense
• etc, etc, etc

it can also be pretty fun

Trainer Jeremy Silman has an article where he explains his theory that going over a LOT of grandmaster games QUICKLY helps your recognize patterns and structures.  It always struck me as a bit of an unusual theory, but its one view.  I think most folks and most trainers would recommend GM games that come with analysis for someone of your rating.  

I don't think going over the games of someone slightly stronger that you weren't involved in would do anything useful.  In fact, lets say they did some stupid stuff, and you aren't strong enough to catch it.  You might internalize what they did and repeat their errors.  At best, it doesn't seem like a great use of time.  

Thanks guys for your input. 

@tictactoeprodigy I'll try to apply your pointers. This sounds really logical. 

@ArtNJ The method by Silman sounds very interesting. If that works it would be a very good use of ones time. In the same respect I now think you're right, that analysing games by slightly stronger players might not be a good use of time.

Thanks again.

Games played by the old masters (Morphy, Pillsbury, Steinitz, Lasker, Rubenstein, Tarrasch, Reti, Breyer, Nimzovich, Alekhine, etc) are much easier for an amateur to understand and assimilate than games played by modern masters.

In the first place, the ideas involved in those old games are more fully expressed, since defensive technique was less fully developed back then; and the different tactics and strategies were less likely to be "nipped in the bud" before they had a chance to appear on the board.

In the second place... what's the point of trying to "study" something that you don't understand at all, such as one of Carlsen's games? You end up just plugging the moves into an engine and then staring vacuously at the results. This might give you practice at data entry, but how does it assist your development as a chess player?

I have a slightly different view to that expressed by a few in that I think there is value in analysing games that are played by slightly stronger views. 

Certainly I like the idea that @ArtNJ described which is that by going over quite a lot of GM games you might memorise certain motifs that you might be more likely to play in your own games. And I certainly recommend looking at GM games analysed by other GMs. I particular like the analysis on this site by GM Simon Williams who has a lot of good video context here.

But I think there is merit in looking at lower level games and games around your level or a bit weaker or stronger. The reason for this is that when I analyse games, after I have done my own analysis I use an engine to check things. Sometimes I don't understand why the engine says that this move is much stronger that that move; in those situations I might play out both continuations against the engine. What I seem seeking is to be able to understand what the engine is suggesting and why a particular move is good (or bad). Ultimately I want to understand what was it about the opening, for example, that led to problems for this or that player. Yes, there is a danger of memorising bad moves or patterns but, for me, the advantages outweigh this.