Do you have to study chess theory?

"... [annotated games are] infinitely more useful than bare game scores. However, annotated games vary widely in quality. Some are excellent study material. Others are poor. But the most numerous fall into a third category - good-but-wrong-for-you. ... You want games with annotations that answer the questions that baffle you the most. ... masters usually don't make the kind of instructive mistakes that amateurs learn the most from. In master-vs.-master games, the errors are usually minor and the punishment is so slow coming that the educational value is often lost. Perhaps the best game collection written specifically for novices is Logical Chess, Move by Move. It provides an explanation for every move and shows why the good moves are good and the bad ones are bad. Many of the games were lost by non-masters. ... there are major advantages to studying older games rather than those of today. The ideas expressed in a Rubinstein or Capablanca game are generally easier to understand. They are usually carried out to their logical end, often in a memorable way, ... In today's chess, the defense is much better. That may sound good. But it means that the defender's counterplay will muddy the waters and dilute the instructional value of the game. For this reason the games of Rubinstein, Capablanca, Morphy, Siegbert Tarrasch, Harry Pillsbury and Paul Keres are strongly recommended - as well as those of more recent players who have a somewhat classical style, like Fischer, Karpov, Viswanathan Anand and Michael Adams. ..." - GM Andrew Soltis (2010)

Personally, I love looking over Karpov's games for insight into positional play; and Alekhine's games for inspiration.

U dont need theory until ur like 2000

If one have time to play video games or watch TV Soap operas, one can spare some time for chess studies,

@shiningstar12345 said in #23:

U dont need theory until ur like 2000

U never reach 2000 without theory.

@ryan121 said in #25:

U never reach 2000 without theory.

I didn't start analyzing until I was 2k

Your case is an exemption. Generally players can't reach 2000 without studying theory

Generally players that have reached 2000 don't lose to the bird opening in 19 moves.

I think the arguments about whether study theory is needed or not needed is because different people have a different definition of what studying theory means.

I would say the following is studying chess theory. learning what a fork is and the different types of forks, learning what a skewer is, learning en passant, learning casting rules, learning basic ideas like taking the centre, develop your pieces, don't move the same piece twice in the opening, develop your knight before bishop, get your king safe early. learning king and pawn against king, learning how to checkmate with rook and king.

All theory, all theory that's ok for beginners to follow but experienced players break them all the time with their extra knowledge of theory. It's much quicker to learn them from a video or book than just playing chess and earning them from experience.

Humans self learning is not like Alpha Zero and Leela. Humans brain have to be feed with videos, books, Masters games.