Chess Strategies Info about Openings

Quote from this article:

"Too many players think that memorizing a lot of openings will make them strong players. This is dead wrong. The opening you choose defines the plan you'll need to follow in the middlegame. You can play perfectly according to 'book' for fifteen straight moves and reach the position the book evaluated as giving you a 'definite advantage', but if you don't understand the correct middlegame plan or lack the tactical and strategic know-how to execute the plan, you're going to lose that advantage and get whacked. So don't go thinking that great opening play leads automatically to a win -- it doesn't. I can't tell you the number of games I've played in which I played the opening wonderfully well but still dropped the game to my opponent simply because I got lost in the middlegame. The lesson here is that you need to study more than just opening variations -- in fact, your time is much better spent in studying endgames and strategy/tactics. However, many openings do lend themselves to particular middlegame themes that appear again and again, so it's possible (and desirable) to combine opening study with middlegame/endgame study. That'll be a prominent feature of this series."