@BestSiteEver Kotov described his view on studying learning openings in an interesting way. "Know everything about something and something about everything." He's saying to have a general knowledge of openings and to only do deeper learning on the few opening you choose to specialise in. The point you made about how if you are at a disadvantage at the beginning of the game it is harder to come back, that is the point of learning endgames. Our opponent might come up with a new variation/improvement that we aren't familar with and we may end up in a worse position. I agree with your last point about them all being important, arguably the most difficult to study is the middlegame is their are no sort of standard positions like you get in openings or endgames.
I'll agree with the majority here. If you don't understand openings, you're not going to get to an endgame. You'll get mated in 4 or your opponent will have fun thrashing your pieces and force you into checkmate in general.
Is this about study endgames versus openings? If yes, I'll just answer ClaytonM with this; It's by knowing the endgame that you really understand the opening.
Former world champion Botvinnik on the 7th move by former world champion Capablanca in one of their games: "Theoretical knowledge has never been a strength of Capablanca: he simply did not need it." If a professional player, even world champion is fine out of his book at move 7, why should we bother to study openings?
Please continue the discussion...
I think best way to improve openings is read books about specific and most popular openings and play them often.
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