It must be a tactical opening, because there is nothing positional nor stragetic to do with it.
Plus / Minus:
+ Black can soon connect his rooks, what was the original target of f6
+ Black can always do a artificial castle, with Rhe8 and Kg8
+ However white has got the center, it isn´t threatening a lot. Black can now in peace develop his pieces, although he has to play moves like Nge7...
+ f6 is supporting the strong e5-square, and therefore supporting part of the center.
You would almost play this opening yourself! But also bear these things in your head when playing 2...Kf7:
- In normal chess (perhaps in Chess960 1...f6 and 2...Kf7 may be good moves =P) the natural weak squares are f2 for white and f7 for black, because they are only supported by the king. By placing the king right at this place, you create difficulties for yourself, because you immediately have to answer a move like 3.Bc4+
- White has far more room to develop his pieces and still keep the initiative.
- With f6, you immediately take away the natural square for the knight.
- The kingside of black is after ...0-0 most of the time attacked by bishop, queen, knight and sometimes the rook joins the fight as well. Luckily black has got a solid kingside with R-f8, K-g8 and the pawns f7, g7 and h7 are a wall to break for the white pieces. Well, not anymore. This might be a big weakness, because at short stage black hasn´t got huge compensation for the wasted move.
Resulting games
A opening database gives me exactly 4 mastergames, in which this opening occured. The games (out of a DB with 1.6m games) date all from this century. Detail: games were played by almost all Dutch chess players(!) Twice white won, there was one draw, and more interesting: black has won once! This seems to be very suprising, so let´s have a look at the game:
(I´ve let the first 13 moves - the opening - been analysing by Fritz 12 (20sec), while I´ve been wandering through the rest of the game.)
As you can see here, black was starting up slow, but eventually could keep up with white and the person with rating 2100+ won.
I mentioned earlier there was also a draw made by black. This was a draw after a positional mistake from white, who had a pawn more. Here is the un-annotated version of it: To play or not to play? Always the most important question to ask yourself: is it suitable for me, or not? My advice would be: try first other openings and wait with this one until you are a CM or higher!
B00: Fried Fox Defense
I´m starting to like this © TPOEA program, but you may join with writing articles, asking question, posting games and creating puzzles! Today in the Tactical Positional Opening Endgame Analyses program I´d like you to pay attention to a vert weird opening: the Fried Fox defense. It goes like this way:
1. e4 f6 2.d4 Kf7?!
It must be a tactical opening, because there is nothing positional nor stragetic to do with it.
Plus / Minus:
To play or not to play?
Always the most important question to ask yourself: is it suitable for me, or not? My advice would be: try first other openings and wait with this one until you are a CM or higher!
I hope you enjoyed it,
Bert Dekker
News about the opening
* There is made a thematic tourney about the Fried Fox: http://www.chess.com/tournament/fried-fox-defense You can always try, because it is an unrated tournament!
Analysis can always be better. More to say? Post below in the topic!
*Final Update