Lemming Defense: A Terrible Opening That Might Just Be Good
Imagine an opening so odd, so bad that it becomes so unknown that less than 25 people have ever played it on chess.com. I present to you the Lemming Defense, an opening that instantly doubles black's pawn structure on the a-file to give black ... well, I'm not entirely sure. An open file for the bishop?
Tonight was a special night, folks. @MoonWarrior_1 was gracious enough to play a rapid game against me, so how did I take advantage of the opportunity to play such a high-rated, top-tier player?
By playing the Lemming Defense, of course. An opening played just 24 times on chess.com.
Look, I was going to lose anyway... why not do it in a fun way?
Spoiler Alert: The Lemming Defense sucks.
But I mean ... it's also ... actually ... somehow kinda good?
Instantly I had already doubled my pawns on the a file after 1. e4, na6 2. Bxa6, bxa6 - but, I mean, that's the whole part of the Lemming Defense, for some reason. So after 3. ne3, I sat there for awhile thinking about what Mr. Lemming (I did research and still have no idea who this is named after, maybe it's named after the actual rodent?) was trying to accomplish by doubling his pawns 2 moves in. I figured the idea was to get the bishop to control the vertical file (is that a thing?) so I played Bb7 to prop my light-squared bishop and take control across the board.
Such a weird position, really a terrible one, but it wasn't ... that bad? In fact, it seemed to have an odd element of actually being ... good?
The really sad part for me is I blew the game by erroneous blunders that had nothing to actually do with the Lemming Defense, so I really feel like I let it down. I blundered my Knight in mid-game, allowing Moonwarrior to go +4. To be fair, my position was pretty bad, but it really wasn't bad enough to make the blunders I did.
Interestingly enough, before the end game, I noticed that since I had my bishop sitting on b7, I brought over my other bishop to c7 and actually had a direct line of attack on white's king, causing him to move in the corner. Was this actually the goal of the Lemming? Striking, to say the least.
And then, I saw it. A possible smother might idea, was the Lemming going to be the savior and prove to be the most dominate opening of all time?
No, because moonwarrior is a literal God of chess and saw it too, and defended it perfectly. From there, I proceeded to fall for his trap thinking I could take his knight, not realizing my pawn was pinned. He forked my queen, and quickly checkmated me.
I let you down, Mr. Lemming 
However, the idea is still very interesting. Because will moonwarrior is a super good, high-rated chess player, I wonder if someone lower rated (like me) would have seen it. Had he not seen it, this is what I was going for:
