The Secret to Chess Improvement

I recently revealed in the comments to my previous post that I am, in fact, a lazy-ass mo' fo'. I haven't been working at all on my game, so (naturally) I figured this is the time to start playing a new (to me) opening repetoire. What secret side-line, universal, study-free "system" am I employing? Which slew of books have I ordered promising an easy, worry-free time of it?

None.

I've decided to start playing classical, main-line openings with minimal, if any, work memorizing lines and just play chess; and it's working. I've won my last three games with a Ruy Lopez as white, a Taimanov Sicilian with black, and a Classical French as white. For each, I've spent about 10-30 minutes looking at some typical set-ups and off I went. This is forcing me to just think about the positions I get instead of trying to remember the move order for moves 13 through 15 in the Dragon 9. O-O-O line. It's very refreshing and surprisingly stress free. I now think I'm more in tune with the whole game as opposed to ending up in some position I'm not familiar with because my opponent deviated from what I knew.

I guess all the advice about not studying openings and just getting to a decent middle game is true.

Apart from obvious opening tricks, I don't think there's anyone below Master level that can beat me outright with superior book knowledge. Sure, they may get a "better" opening out of it, but I think I'm good enough to avoid a completely losing position. Then I get the chance to bamboozle them with tactics, at worst I might have to save a worse ending. That can be fun too :)

-Matt