Should You Study Chess Openings or Endgames First?
The classic beginner question, answered honestly: when to drill openings, when to learn endgames, and why the strongest players insist you do both.
"Should I study openings or endgames first?" is one of the most-asked questions in chess — and most answers are dogma. Capablanca said to study endgames first; your favourite streamer probably told you openings win games. Here's the honest version.
The short answer
Up to about 1500, your games are decided by blunders and basic technique, not by deep preparation. So the highest-value study is: a couple of sound openings you actually understand, plus the handful of essential endgames that let you convert a winning position once you reach it. You don't pick one — you split your time, heavily weighted toward whatever is currently losing you games.
Why endgames are underrated
Openings feel productive because there's endless material to consume. But you can't memorize your way out of a won king-and-pawn ending you don't understand — and those endings decide an enormous share of amateur games. Worse, the techniques are exact: there is a right way to win king and pawn vs king, a right way to win the Lucena, and a right way to hold the Philidor. Learn them once and they're yours forever. Our guide to the essential endgames lists exactly which ones matter.
Why openings still matter
The flip side: if you get crushed in the first ten moves, you never reach the endgame at all. You don't need twenty moves of theory — you need to reach a sound, familiar middlegame without falling into known traps. A small, well-drilled repertoire does that.
The plan that actually works
Do both, on a schedule you'll keep:
- Openings: one repertoire for White and one for Black, drilled with spaced repetition so they stick.
- Endgames: the basic checkmates, the king-and-pawn opposition, and the Lucena and Philidor — drilled against a perfect tablebase until automatic.
- Tactics: the real source of rating below 1800, every day.
Ten focused minutes a day across all three beats an hour of passive opening videos. Start wherever you're bleeding points — and if you've never trained endgames, that's almost certainly the fastest rating you'll ever gain.