What's so bad about learning openings in club level?

yeah......... players who are highly rated like to tell ya what to do or not do......... some of their advice is good, a lot is NOT. if it concerns moves on the board - yeah, they'll know more than an inexperienced guy. they can pick out the moves - BUT, how they acquired their knowledge, how YOU should acquire your knowledge ---- they often are wrong. they see it all from how they did it. i guess that worked for them - but just because it worked for them, no reason it will for you, or the next guy, or that guy, or that other guy........etc. for that you need a teacher, not some guy who is simply a highly rated player.

i always enjoyed openings, and so i studied them. once you 'memorize' them, and figure out they why's and why nots --- even if you make mistakes (you will) - imho you'll be doing fine. i play guys better than me, who don't know an opening from a banana - whatever. they're stronger players than me. actually, against them i MAY have an advantage in the opening, which i may lose due to their being stronger than me. that happens. they're stronger players than me, they should be able to recover from their opening gaffes. these guys do not want to study openings. that's up to them. however, they won't be able to become really highly ranked players until they correct their openings. which may be never. that's up to them, entirely. those guys sometimes love playing, hate studying.

i agree with #3: at lower levels in particular, guys will not know the openings, and they'll make all manner of crazy moves. you should be able to take advantage of their gaffes. what you should NOT do, imho, is learn complex variations and openings, so probably not something like the ruy lopez, altho i guess that's up to you. i'm a p low ranked player, and i play the ruy regularly. i enjoy that opening, as it has lots of variations and immediately confronts black with Bb5 attacking the N at c6. how a lower rated guy responds to that provocation can be strange, and your job is to take advantage of that...

personally, now i mainly play e4 openings that are pretty open....... petrof, scotch, and i started with the italian. i don't care for the italian any more. it's pretty static, esp at the lower levels, imho. i've been trying to learn the d4 tree of openings --- i guess i've just never felt comfortable with that... but until i spent months playing the d4 stuff in blitz, i would not have learned or gained that knowledge............. so it was i guess worth it.

i strongly encourage guys to learn openings at the club level..... i mean, unless you hate or don't like doing study. in which case, maybe don't bother or just study a little....

#1 "The opening stage has always fascinated me, and this seems unpopular but as I learn to understand the ideas in different openings, i am able to apply those ideas and principals in my game as a whole! "

I think that the warning about "studying the openings" not being the best use of study time for the beginner is directed to those trying rote memorization. Your statement above shows you are not doing rote memorization of the openings. If the opening is fascinating to you then that will keep you motivated and is for you a good road to learn the ideas.

Motivation is very important. Different things motivate different people. Studying tactics may be the biggest bang for the study time for beginners/intermediates but there are people that find doing tactic exercises boring. The elementary endgames should also be learned, but it is very usual for instructors to find their students do not want to spend much time with them. The second biggest bang for study time is going over your own games with a very strong player. But some people find this very difficult - usually because it is so ego bruising.

Re #3 and opponents who play something out-of-the book early on - yes, but this is part of the reason that people bang on about understanding stuff and not just memorising it. So if I teach a beginner the Scotch Opening and they just memorize 1. e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 exd4 4. Nxd4 Bc5 5. Be3 Qf6 6. c3 etc then they won't be much better off as soon as the opponent plays something unexpected, but if they understand it they'll know that d4 is a good thing to aim for in a King's Pawn opening, so if the opponent plays 1 ... h6 or something then d4 is probably a good next move. Similarly, if 2 ... d6 they'll probably find d4, and if you've explained that 5 ... Qf6 is necessary to avoid Nxc6 winning the bishop, they'll have that in their box of tricks if the opponent misses it.

Similarly, I've just started looking at the open Sicilian and while I'm unlikely for the moment to get 16 moves down some critical line, a good explanation of that line will cover a lot of the motivation for the moves and hence tell me what sort of thing I might want to aim for against someone who plays less theoretically optimal stuff. This seems useful.

Certainly learn openings at club level (or beginner level for that matter). Its just that 'learn openings' does not mean 'memorise lines', but learn the ideas and tactics associated to that opening, so you know what the typical plan is.

So eg at beginner level with 1. e4 e5, 'learning openings' means being aware of B+N combining on f7, etc.