Would we care so much about openings if they didn't have such cool names?

If you ever look material for improving your chess, be it books, videos or online courses, you'll see a lot about openings. In fact, it often seems as though there is more material on openings than all other areas combined. When beginners are looking to study, they usually focus on their openings and a common response to a losing streak is to reconsider your opening. But is this the best use of our time? Are openings really so important or are we just mislead by how cool their names are?

Obviously, there are good reasons to study openings. They are a part of every player's repertoire and it would be ridiculous to just move random pieces in the opening. It is clearly beneficial to get positions you are comfortable with and give you a plan you can follow. There's also the simple fact that you will play an opening in every single game (unlike endgames for example) and as they are the first feature of the game you experience, it makes sense that they are first on the list of things to study.

The problem is that many beginners seem to spend too much time on the first step, without moving on to the other important parts of the game. When I look at the catalogues of chess books and videos, it seems as though 50% or more is about openings. No student should devote 0% of their time to openings, but neither should they spend more than 50%.

In my experience, games are rarely decided in the opening. I have played games that were decided in a handful of moves, but this was almost never due to knowledge of opening theory, usually I saw the potential for a tactic and figured it out from there. A good opening can lead to an advantageous middlegame, but these advantages are usually too subtle to be decisive for beginners (the main audience for instructional material). I climbed from 1400 to 1900 rapid with only a basic knowledge of openings and instead relied on outplaying my opponent in the middlegame.

So, why would so many people misuse their time and neglect more important aspects of chess? I think one simple explanation is that openings have cool names. There is something appealing about studying moves named after famous players and exotic countries. People talk about openings like they are sports teams - are you Team French or Scandinavian? Are you more of a Morphy or Berlin Defence kind of player? Would you choose the Yugoslav Attack over the Sicilian Defence? Compared to this, who would want to spend their time with something as dull as rook and pawn endgames?

Another appeal of openings is that they give the illusion of progress. The simple fact is that concepts like outposts, opposition, bad bishops, pawn breaks etc are complicated and depend entirely on the context. Sometimes bishops are better than knights and sometimes the opposite is true, and it can be difficult to tell which is which. However, you can learn the first couple of moves of an opening and feel like you have made concrete progress. It gives you the (usually false) hope that you can learn one cool trick that will win you countless games. You're not just a 1400 fumbling around without a strategy, you're part of a team. It also shifts some responsibility off your shoulders because you tell yourself that you lost not because you blundered, but because your opponent knew how to counter your opening.

It might seem far-fetched that people would be swayed by something as simple as an attractive name but the entire advertising industry is worth billions and it is built around the fact making something a little more appealing makes it a lot more popular. I'll be honest, the main reason I play the Sicilian Dragon is because I like the name (I made a meme of this which Anish Giri of all people then tweeted). As a proud Irishman, I can't play c4 on the first move (the English), although my patriotism doesn't extend to playing the Irish Gambit (I'm proud, not stupid).

I genuinely believe that if openings were known merely by their notations instead of names, there would be far less material for them because people wouldn't care as much. Can you imagine people being as excited for the Ruy Lopez if it was the Nc6-Bb5 opening? How could c5-g6 compete with a name like the Hyper-accelerated Sicilian Dragon? Likewise, endgames would be far more popular if they replaced the dull, literal names like king and pawn, for something more dramatic like Brazilian Fire or the Chinese Dragon. Would you rather watch a video about a "knight versus bishop endgame" or one about the "Australian harpoon"?

Overall, openings have their value, but they also come with an opportunity cost. Studying them won't make you any worse of a player, but most students would improve more from an hour studying tactics, strategy or endgames than an hour studying openings. There's no point buying fancy opening courses if you're just going to blunder your pieces after move 10. Don't let their cool names seduce you and focus on developing a well-rounded set of chess skills.