It’s one of the oldest debates in chess, and you’ve surely already heard the usual verdict: “beginners shouldn’t work on openings, they should do tactics.” That advice is half right and half misleading. Let’s see what to actually take from it.

The grain of truth in “don’t work on openings”

Let’s start by granting the advice its point, because it rests on an accurate observation. Most beginner games aren’t lost because of the opening. They’re lost in the middlegame, on a piece left hanging, a missed fork, an unseen mate. A player at 900 Elo who memorizes twenty moves of a sharp opening and neglects tactics will keep losing, because they’ll hand over a rook on move 15.

So if “learning openings” means memorizing long theoretical lines by heart, then yes, it’s a waste of time for a beginner. On that point, the classic advice is right.

Where the advice goes off the rails

But there’s a slip. Between “don’t memorize twenty moves of theory” and “ignore openings completely,” there’s a world of difference. And leaping to the second is shooting yourself in the foot.

Because with no notion of openings at all, you come out of the start of the game with an already bad position: king in the center, pieces poorly placed, queen paraded around for nothing. You hand your opponent a free advantage before the real battle even begins. You’ll only get to exercise your middlegame tactics if you reach the middlegame in a playable position.

The truth is in the middle, and it’s simple: a beginner should learn openings, but understand them, not recite them.

What an understood opening gives you

Concretely, a well-absorbed opening does three things for you that tactics alone don’t. It saves you thinking time, because you don’t stall for ten minutes on your third move. It spares you the most common opening traps, the ones that sink a game before it even starts. And it brings you consistently into positions you know, where you know which plan to follow in the middlegame instead of improvising in the fog.

That last point is the most underrated. An opening isn’t just a sequence of moves: it’s a door into a type of position, with its typical plans. Always playing the same opening means finding the same structures game after game, and therefore learning to play them better and better. The beginner who changes openings every game starts from zero each time.

Understand rather than memorize

The whole nuance lies there. What you need isn’t a list of thirty squares on your favorite line. It’s to know why the opening moves are played: occupy the center, develop, get the king to safety. Those are the opening principles, and they serve you in every position, including the ones where the opponent deviates from theory.

Four to six understood moves beat twenty recited ones. I laid out that math in how many opening moves you need to memorize: the answer is far shorter than you’d imagine. With a handful of moves and the principles, you come cleanly out of the opening against the vast majority of your opponents.

Where beginners actually go wrong

When beginners break their teeth on openings, the openings usually aren’t the culprit. The method is. Read a list of moves, retain it that evening, forget it the following week. You don’t learn an opening by reading it, any more than you learn to ride a bike by reading a manual.

Prologue is built around that gap. You play the lines instead of reading them, move by move, first guided then from memory, and each move spells out the principle it applies. What you keep isn’t a recitation that fades but a logic that guides you even when your opponent leaves the book. That’s how you get the useful part of openings without the memorization that wears everyone out. To lay your foundations in order, go through the guide to learning chess.

Frequently asked questions

At what level do you really need to study openings in depth?

In-depth study, with long and precise lines, becomes useful around 1600 to 1800 Elo, when games are no longer decided by simple blunders. Below that, a few understood moves per opening and good principles are plenty.

How much time should a beginner spend on openings?

A small share of your study time, say a quarter, the rest going to tactics and basic endgames. The key is to know one opening as White and one reply to 1.e4 and to 1.d4 as Black, understood and not memorized.

Is it better to learn one opening or several?

One, deeply, to begin with. A small but well-understood repertoire gives you better positions more often than a collection of skimmed openings. You’ll widen it later, once your foundations are solid.

Can working on openings hurt my progress?

Only if you spend all your time on it at the expense of tactics, or if you memorize without understanding. Well-dosed and understood, openings speed up your progress by giving you healthy positions to play. It’s the misuse that hurts, not the learning itself.