Let's Play: Rank the Bad Opening!

I'll have to think about it. For sure, the Albin has downticked and the Budapest has upticked since I started, I just don't know how far.

And if you assume the Parham is more or less equal, then it's clearly superior to anything which "jumps off a cliff", to use @Irontiger's terminology.

Yes, that was a beautiful remark of Irontiger! LOL.

I'm not up-to-date on my Parham theory... but I believe the Traxler is currently surviving, in a theoretical sense. One downside of the Traxler is that white can force a draw if he wants, but I don't know how bad an issue that is...

There have been countless threads on the worst openings. I liked this thread originally because it was a discussion of just a few openings. Damiano's Opening is bad. Yeah. We get it.

How to save the queen ? Well, Black cannot take it without developing all his queenside first, which leaves a good deal of time to White to find a way out. And preventing Bc1-g5xf6 will consume one more tempo from Black.

How Black can win this possition?

I would be interested, cervinoyo : what subtle connection do you see between the position you ask us to analyse (BTW, it's obvious, see #81), and the topic ? Just to know...

Untrue. Black can get mated in 3 in a line analogous to the Fool's. 1. e4, g5; 2. e5. f6???; 3. Qh5# is how it went in a short game I played against the kid next door many years ago.

C'mon you guys, the Englund almost wins a bishop by force at my level

@melvinbluestone I like your idea for a new forum topic title.

Bluebird, the reason I say icelandic is terrible because as a Scanadinavian player, no one has ever accepted the sac so I've been forced to play en exchange french which is the most boring crap ever. Hence nowadays I just go c6 and transpose into a caro-kann. Atleast that way I can still play chess without making it risk-free for white. I thought we're talking about otb openings not blitz openings. I've played 1. g5 and won before, that doesn't make it good.

It's kind of sad that I had to look half of those up but from worst to best:

1st Traxler - Bxf7 Free pawn for nothing and then some.

Tied for 2nd Halloween/Cochrane, free peice for not all that much, but at least theres some complications involved.

3rd Englund - Free pawn for nothing.

4th Parham - A sad way to waste your white peices.

Tied for 5th Albin/Budapest, both with dubious reputation but are legit enough as a surprize weapon and have won some top level games.

i dont know the parham and the cochrane doesnt look too promising to me, but i think the traxler is one cool opening. Well i havent studied and you are the master, but still something in me refuses to believe that its like that, the traxler is way to cool to be bad....

and yeah the albins countergambit it might be bad i dont know, but its fun if white plays badly you look like a genius. 

also not all bad openings are so bad, just look at the gm who played the damiano defense against fischer and managed a draw (unless ofc that video on youtube was faked and it never happened)

i mean so bad that they are absolutly not playable

This is exactly the reason of all the openings mentioned, and also the reason why you should not play them.

but i dont think albins countergambit is that easy to refute. 

but anyway even if it is, i just like the crazyness of it, even if its bad it is at least somehow very imaginativ in my opinion.