Open 1.f4 challengers?

I played the Bird (Antoshin to be exact) against GM Gavrikov and he responded with a system involving g6, Bg7, c5, d6, Nc6 and e5.  Please forgive me for not remembering the exact move order - this game was a few years ago.

2...d6 is 3...e5 is a very strong plan that should be recognised - and maybe met via 3. d4. In fact after 1 or 2...d6, black already demonstrates an understanding of white's plan and shows an active refutation attempt. (I'm very afraid to see the move in fact, but nobody in blitz ever tried it.) In any case, 2. b3 seems a very slow plan.

1...c5 is perfectly fine. It tempts white into 2. f4!? d5! (The Tal Gambit, strong against the old Grand Prix) 3. Nf3!? (The Bryntse Gambit as analysed in Mackenzie's blog.) 1. f4 c5 2. Nf3 d5 3. e4!? is another sequence. Personally I enjoy the resulting positions as white, both with and without the queen sac.

Been there...done it...thank you for the advice. It's one of the reasons I wanted to learn this. It seems to bring more of an adreniline rush...lol

I also liked playing 1.b3/or 1.b4. Yes I can be difficult. But, after doing allllll the openings allll the time, and the result ends up allll the same...where's the enjoyment? Especially if it's a dominating victory. I find no thrill in that...anymore. I actually enjoy receiving a beatdown, or put in a rough prediciment. Something to make me think. Not rool my eyes in boredom.

hope that explains my reasoning

I find it funny that people so highly recommend playing 1. e4 or 1. d4.  Against a dummy with a great memory and a GM-style book, you can quickly get yourself in hot water.  With an opening like 1.f4, there is a lot less theory to contend with, so I find I get better results much of the time.  This also goes when I play other "weird" openings.  I prefer, not an adrenalin rush, but rather just plain old chess.

imo it's not that serious. Maybe your opponent can memorize like a GM but can they play like one? I doubt it. And the idea that there are class players that know every line in existence after 1.e4 and 1.d4 seems hard to believe. By playing the bird or anything else you're simply playing into a familiar position and trying to get the themes down just like they are minus the memorization. How often are you getting this "frontier chess" except other than when they just play a weird move and you go back to thinking about tabiyas? Perhaps a similar argument can be made against players that study openings at all. 

At any rate I think people should just play what they want. But at the end of the day theory memorizers(?) and offbeat opening users are all playing with the intent of confusing the opponent in the opening.

I agree with that last statement. If you get the chance to confuse your opponent in the beginning, that there will throw him/her off their game and would have to think off the top of their heads instead of going with what they know. I played 1. f4 in a 3min/5min game here. After about a few moves, they were stuck in limbo woundering what to do next due to the fact that they have no clue! How many ppl can say they even seen an opening like that, or seriously played against one?  Waaaay under 50% They they snivel and pout saying, "I would've known what to do if they played 1.d4 or 1.e4". All they see is an opening which appears weak due to the f-pawn opening up and they see an opportunity to attack the King side with their Queen, bring her out early. Not going by any tactic, except busting out the book on "cheap & uneffective/pointless moves". Which is cool. The more you make pointless moves, it gives the opening more opportunity to develope the pieces. It's not a sound opening, or a absolute victory opening. But honestly, what opening gives one?

I get "frontier chess" with every game.  There are "tabiya" moments, just as you have in your 1. d4/1. e4 openings, but there are also some really nice adventurous lines as well.  

Congratulations, you can now beat 60% of players with cheap opening tricks in blitz.

(60% being around 1300 here, if I am not mistaken)

The surprise effect is an argument only if all other things are equal. 1.a3 d5 2.h3 surprises too, but who would play it ?

Iron, just a bit of sarcasm, no?  I wonder (only wonder) if the guy who used to play on ICC with the 3000+ ELO who was a Stonewall warrior still plays.  If he does, would he have gotten the same level of slack?

I mean, seriously...I read threads like these, and then I go back.  Maybe I am wrong - I need to review my opening.  I take a good look at 1. d4, 1. e4, even 1. c4 - nope, all are inferior.  It's not that they are inferior - they just ultimately are not what I am going to be satisfied with.  The positions I get out of 1. f4 are to my liking, and that matters way more than what any GM advocates.

And by the way, there is a very strong player who has often played ideas involving your a3 and h3 stuff.  Basman actually played this exact idea at least 2x.  Granted, both were losses with the a3/h3, but he has also done some lesser extravagant lines, such as h3/g4.  

I remember one of my best games (which ended up being a loss in the late middle-game/endgame) on here was against a 2100+ rated player, and I adopted the Stonewall.  It was with Black, but regardless - the themes are there.  

Probably the most tacky comment you made was "cheap opening tricks", as if that is the only thing 1. f4 offers.  It shows you have either 0% understanding of the opening, or just like to troll.  

Tell me, do you study SOS?  Do you not like to surprise your opponents?  What opening do you play?  I am sure that within those openings, there are various paths you normally prefer to tread, but occasionally you like to shake up the move order a bit to offer some new, colorful possibilities.  

I never said that.

I said that the surprise value has no impact on the correctness of an opening, and close to none for the decision to play it or not, and I attack the "it's good because it's surprising" mentality (which was fully illustrated by the post I quoted : "waay more than 50% of people will never have seen this !").

It is obvious that 1.f4 is much, much, much better than the ridiculous 1.a3 2.h3 example I proposed. But if (big "if" there) it happens that 1.f4 throws away a significant part of the opening advantage, its surprise value has no impact on the fact that it sucks at the level where this advantage becomes significant.

n the other hand, 1.f4 is good enough to be played on highest, 2600--2800 level.

That it is not played there at this time is only a matter of fashion: 1.d4 f5 is played quite often now again. Because 1.f4 is not worse (extra tempo for White), I am sure it will be played, too sooner or later on Super GM's level.

"Fasion" as many like to call it is not as simple as GMs getting bored. Factly almost every opening in existence has been played by a GM but that's hardly evidence that any of them are good. At GM level you simply won't walk away with advantage for White in any of the interpretations of the opening. Sure anyone can play it and White isn't going to be worse but playability is not the only criteria a GM takes into account. If it's played at all it will be for reasons other than a getting a comfortable advantage. And as seen in the English and other openings having an extra tempo can actually be a disadvantage. Besides, whether GMs play an opening or not isn't important for most players anyway.

Schlecter, I agree with basically everything you have written here, although I would like to add an interesting tidbit from Malaniuk.  Per something I had read a while back, he does not play the Leningrad Bird because he says the tempo issues can be pesky to deal with.  I also recall Taylor trying to find productive use of early tempos in the Bird in his Classical chapter.  With that being said, I have NEVER found myself lacking for fun, creative ideas with 1. f4.  The only idea I have seen GMs employ that I simply cannot wrap my head around (either for it being trashy or just I am not that good to grasp it) is stuff like the Qe1-h4 stuff.  I think it is way too early and puts your queen in a compromising position.  Just about every time I have played it, it comes back to bite me.  I know Taylor wrote about Larsen doing this 3 times and finally shelving it, although it stems out of Classical Dutch theory.  I personally think Qg3 is a nice square if you can prepare it right, and of course Qf3 is a standard idea for me (I am not as big of a fan of playing early Nb1-d2-f3 setups).  

But I have learned that no matter how much you say what you are saying, until the GMs say it, they ain't gonna listen.  They definitely won't go back in history to when many GMs were playing the Bird fashionably - or if they did, they might say something like "Well, that was years ago" or "They didn't have computers back then".

Interesting what you mentioned about Malaniuk.

Perhaps he meant that the plan with Qe8 in the Leningrad variant of the Dutch is only played after White has commited himself to d4-d5.

With an extra tempo, White should thus wait (one move more!) until Black plays d5-d4, after which Qe1 could follow.

And it is possible that Black wouldn't do that, and finds other more appropriate options than d5-d4.

I mean, it is possible that copy-pasting White's and Black's play from to Dutch to the Bird in the 'Tabiya of the Leningrad' (d4-d5, met by Qd8-e8) which was always the hallmark of Malaniuk, is less logical than some other sequence of moves in a Bird with White fianchetto g3 + Bg2.

I know he loves his Qe8, and I understand that, but I think 2 interesting options are good for White in the Leningrad.  I am not as big a fan of the Polar Bear, although Danielsen liked that idea.  I like either Nc3 (I think best) or e3 (2nd best, slower, but still good).

Schlecter I agree with your points but they seem to describe the surprise value of the bird and not the objective evaluation. I'm sure it's playable but most of the time GMs are playing for an advantage.

Anyway the simplest English position is 1.c4 e5 2.Nc3/d3 Nf6 3.a3. White would like to see d5 when he could attempt to play reversed sicilian positions that he normally wouldn't be able to. But Black hasn't played that move yet nor is he forced to and after 3...d6 followed by ...Nf6 and ...g6 Black will get a position where the move a3 may not be useful.

Titan, how is it not useful?  White has no reason to expect Black to play ...d5, and a3 more often than not is a great waiting move.  However, don't many English players prefer the g3 lines?

Titan, the reversed open sicilian is as well an option to equalize for Black.

Some GMs indeed have no fear to play d7-d5.