1. e4 d6 2. d4 f5

I  play this sometimes as black. Is it a strong or weak opening to play ?

There is no way to immediately exploit 2.f5, but the king will have difficulties getting to a safe place.

This must be a bad opening for black. 6. Qh4 check. And the black king has to go to d7. Can't be good.

But the knight is blocking Qh4+ and even if it moves and the Qh4+ is played I play b3 and the queen is in trouble and I can bring out the bishop.

6 Qh5+ and the K must go to d7 , bad for black

Up to 5. Bxf6 it's not so bad. If you look in Game Explorer you'll find 5 Master games that reached that position so it must be playable. However, in all five of those games black responded with 5. ... exf6. Your move 5. ... gxf6 is clearly bad and can be shown to be so immediately with 6. Qh5+ Ke7 - the black king is going to find a hard job to find a safe spot and will get in the way of rapid black development by blocking the black pieces as they try to get out.

Basically, you need to look at all of White's possible replies. If there is something that immediately ruins your plans (like 6. Qh5+), then you know that something isn't right.

In any case, you definitely need to watch out for Qh5+ if you play 2. ...f5. That's why the Pirc, Modern, and Robatsch defenses are used much more--they all guard against it.

This is the Balogh defense, relative of the Dutch defense. It doesnt do very well.

Well, your two posts are enough proof for me...Pirc defense all the way!

Maybe I'm missing something, but for the life of me this doesn't make any sense. Will someone please enlighten me?

Both users were messing up the names of the squares. I have them corrected above.

grnknt, FrostedFlames is wrong in that g6 is not playable after 6. Qh5+ because the pawn is no longer on g7.

Well, (1) it's Qh5+ not Qh4+

(2) it's g6, not b3

(3) You can't make that move because you already used that pawn on move 5. That's why it's better to play 5. ...exf6 instead of 5. ...gxf6.

it kind of is

i play this too