My playing style

Yes I would... To know your openings gives you an advantage to not to fall into opening traps. It's critical to know opening theory if you want a serious chance at winning. Now, I am not saying knowing your openings is enough, there are tactics, mating patterns ect. to learn, there is the middlegame and endgame you must conquer. Why Kasparov said theory is useless unless you are a grandmaster, seems very at odds to me. I use theory all the time to good advantage and I am no GM! I have the strength of a candidate master at the very least. Yeah. Kasparovs statement seems a bit pretentious in the sense that it could be misconstrued thay only Grandmasters can understand opening theory, and to me, blatantly false to say it serves no purpose for those under a GM level.

@theTestoftheWest

Sorry spell check doing my head in. Edited @theTestoftheWest

@Darth-Sheev
An advantage is only an advantage if you can use it. A beginner can't do anything with those advantages so OPENINGS ARE USELESS TO HIM! Do you know the quote every game under 2000 is decided by a tactic? Do you think it's true? I would even advance the quote and say every game under 2200 is only decided by one player either blundering or playing passively. Opening traps (tricks are for kids) don't need to be learned. You fall into one ones and never again. How many time did you fall into the e4, Qh5 trap? Having a passive position is far from losing. It's probably even harder to win, because the attacker has the pressure of not succeeding.
Do you play OTB?

(No worries. English has many long counterintuitive (<-another one) words ._.)

Then every quote is too vague, where is the beginner under 2200? Furthermore, you can practice for years and still kick ass from a 1300-1500 rating. I am not considering newbies. I just find the statement that theory serves no purpose for those not titled GM or below 2200 as a strange hypothesis.

@theTestoftheWest

Yes I played overtheboard in my youth, mores in the last four years.

#24
A beginner is stuck as long as he doesn't learn from his mistakes and trains tactics and endings (and to be honest. How many of those beginners do you know).

The beginners under 2200 are everyone. And how many blunder tactics? Probably all of them. How many gain a winning advantage right after the opening? Probably far less if not almost none.
The range 2000-2200 is mostly decided through a lot of tournament games. More experience wins. The stronger attack or the better ending technique wins.

A lot of Grandmasters seem to be not so keen about openings and since they are far better than all of us will ever be: why not listen to them? It's a ,,strange hypothesis" by some of the strongest players afterall.

#25
In those OTB games: did you ever really needed the opening theory that badly? Or were the opening principles enough already.

The test of the west, bb5 prepares the d5 advance, winning a piece. That's why he resigned. Also opening theory is not enough to win, but at 1700+ I think it's essential. God knows I've fallen for the Bxe6 trick enough in the Bg5 Najdorf

I've tried the ruy a bit lately and liked it
Smooth buildup to an attack on the kingside seems nice to me
About the kia- I feel it just gives up the opening advantage of white. Also black has a lot more options than white does in the kid- which are kingside castling, the samisch, queenside castling and a couple other sidelines
I've also been messing around with the grunfeld on chess.com

With decent results
I won't learn opening theory a lot, just revise from my games in pga if I mess up
I'll try it here as well

I mean good luck playing against the King's gambit if you're not booked up. "Yeah, let's try to come up with a 10 second responses to concepts developed over hundreds of years by players who sat for like several hours and thought about one move".

@CountCracula It's really weird having a 2300+ rating in classical and asking that question. Either you're a natural monster or you're using software as aid.