A solid smith morra accepted as white

No offense but the Smith Morra is just bad. Your opponent played badly - why did he play Rb8 or h6? He's just wasting valuable time, these moves aren't useful... especially Rb8. And d6 may give white a lever on e5, but he played e5 himself which generally isn't a good idea - better to just develop the queen and either fiancetto or play e6... e5 is creating a further vulnerability on d6 / a hole on d5 and wasting yet more time since there isn't any knight on d4 to boot with e5, usually the tempo on the knight is the main appeal of e5. Given that he'd played e5 he also needed to wait to play Be7 and first push b5 to tempo the bishop. Because he played Be7 first, you jumped in with the knight and he traded it to save his bishop, then your bishop took back, now he gets no tempo from b5. At this point he shouldn't have pushed b5, he should have just played Bd7. So that was another mistake. But he does play b5... yet he then develops Bd7 instead of Bb7. So that's another strange decision, this leads to his queen having nowhere to go and pinned on b7.

So it's like 4 tempos or so that he basically wasted and alot of mistakes.

Some people play d6 but you have to play it alot more precisely than this, I prefer e6 which is just very simple really, black just shuts your bishop down and develops his queenside, and castles slowly while not moving his d pawn at all, and you really have no pawn break and no attack... white doesn't even have much hope of winning back the d pawn.

It probably works in blitz when people play like that, but if we were to pretend it's an objectively good opening we'd be fooling ourselves. If your opponent had 3-4 more tempos here it'd be you that was struggling to equalize.

I agree to an extent … it is best in shorter time controls like the game above which was 5|0. As with any gambit you need to know all the traps and have good attacking tactics. If it is considered bad that leads me to believe people won’t see it as much and therefore run into trouble or waste their clock trying to stay out of trouble. I would much rather go out of book immediately into a position which I know and my opponent doesn’t even if it is technically unsound.

But I have beaten some very good players with this opening up to 2200 in blitz…. And I’ve only been playing it maybe a month. Hikaru has a video on YouTube of him checkmating super GMs in blitz with this opening and he recommends it and other gambits for chess improvement so I’m going to stick with it for awhile. You are right though it can go south fast and it’s no fun when black manages to get the initiative while white is down a pawn.

Hikaru is going to make videos that get him clicks, but he's also downplayed the opening, he basically said it was trash on stream when he was facing it and told everyone watching to just take the pawn and refute it, while criticizing his opponent for not giving him a real game...

It's a major misconception amongst proponents that you're getting the opponent out of book by doing this. On lichess you will see that 7% of sicilian games are the smith morra... this is move 2, that's a significant number. But furthermore, the lines of the smith morra don't deviate very much, you're basically playing the same setup - you can't really deviate because you just have the e pawn as a lever, no f or c pawn... you're also down a pawn so you can't really play positional moves, you have to attack... and you have to castle kingside... so there's very little variety. It's going to be Bc4 / Qe2 / Rd1 / bishop somewhere / push the e pawn at some point... In contrast, in the Closed Sicilian there are like 5 major things white can do. In a typical open sicilian there are dozens of lines. So even if I reach my open sicilian 60% of the time... by the time you account for all the different lines white can play... I'm only really reaching a given line a small percentage of the time. Then there's the greater complexity of those lines... and the fact the lines are just fundamentally more sound. It's actually alot more difficult for black to manage the theory in the open sicilian. 

The Smith Morra setup is, in reality, one of the most common setups black actually ends up facing. 

But furthermore... there is a great misconception that you are actually up a tempo in the Smith Morra. You would be up a tempo if liquidating the c pawn actually was a gain of useful tempo. But actually, c3 is usually a wasted tempo - liquidating the c pawn does not open up any file white will typically use. Infact, black usually plays Rc8 and uses the c file. That's a typical sicilian move for black... And the D1/A4 diagonal for the queen isn't usually used either due to b5 controlling a4. Playing c3 also means you can't castle queenside, which means less tempo. Hence, getting c3 for free is not really a gain of tempo, because it's a wasted tempo. And when you take back Nxc3 this isn't developing much more initiative than Nxd4 would have. Despite not taking back Nxd4, leaving the d file open... you don't even really have a quicker attack on the d file because you're not queenside castling. When you combine this with the fact black is up a pawn, and therefor is under no immediate pressure to push d5... black actually ends up with more control over the game than he usually has. 

The only real benefit of the Smith Morra, as far as I'm concerned, is it allows the player to not need to learn alot of theory to fight against the sicilian. You're essentially relying on black not knowing his theory very well and not knowing how to punish you. And if they don't know it... or if black makes a tactical mistake under time pressure... well you might get a win - because yeah, you do get a straightforward attack... there is some slight initiative gained in launching a central attack with e5, but it's not much. But honestly, the positions aren't really that difficult tactically either, and if black knows the theory he will enjoy 70% winrates after like 10 moves.

The open is alot more challenging. Smith Morra is just ... something easy, perhaps worth playing while building up to playing the open lines. 

When you read a comment like "no offense but the Smith Morra is just bad" by a low rated player who does not even have an USCF id, you are sure that a load of nonsense will follow to support the claim.

In that case, we weren't disappointed, we had plenty of them.

This image is a snapshot of the winrates for the Smith-Morra at 2000+ elo after 10 moves. And these are blitz ratings, it's even worse in rapid... this is just the standard white setup, most games will reach this position as there's not alot of variety in the Smith Morra setup:

Here's the score in rapid after 10 moves -

We don't need to speculate, nor do we need to submit in awe to some imaginary authority, we can look at the evidence and see that the opening sucks. You'd be hardpressed to find any opening performing this badly. And it's also like -.3 by leela, so...

Your opening is broadly considered bad by top GMs regardless, many players such as Sam Shankland, Nakamura, and Kramnik insult the opening... the reason you base your argument on some fail attempt at appealing to your authority while saying essentially nothing is you don't have an argument... the reason you play the Smith Morra to begin with is you are not good enough at the sicilian theory to actually play the open sicilian...

Sorry but you don't have any credibility to comment on sicilian theory if you play the Smith Morra, if you knew the first thing about the sicilian you would not be playing this opening, pretty much anything else is scoring better... the Bowdler attack is probably better.

To be fair though there’s no shame in being: ‘not good enough at Sicilian theory to actually play the open Sicilian’ - I think a lot of titled players would also put themselves in that category…

Sure, and I say that's the best justification for playing the Smith Morra... though still not a good one, because the other anti-sicilians also circumvent theory while not being completely bad, the Smith Morra is just always dubious, tbh.

The other guy's point is that you are not qualified to make these statements. I kind of agree. You are correct... again to an extent. Smith morra is not sound at high levels of play. But the game in the original post was against a player higher rated than you in every metric and they were smoked by a subtle positional blunder and not one of the well known traps of this gambit. Let's be real, we aren't super GMs and we aren't stockfish... and probably never will be. If a certain opening helps me get to a certain level so be it. I will reassess when it stops working. But trust me, it works... against much better players than yourself. If hikaru has videos of himself beating 2800+ with this opening in blitz, then its good enough for me for blitz.

That's not a serious point it's a fallacy, and probably meant more as an insult / another attempted public ego stroking session which I am not taking the bait for... despite his rating not even being high so it's odd for him to even attempt this... but I have no interest in this, it's what many of the nerds on here live to do but I just find it too lame.

You will find a good player who has played every single opening in the game of chess and won with it at some time, including 1. f3 > 2. Kf2 and whatever else. Your logic suggests that a) every opening in the game is good since it's been won with, b) because we are not masters we could never know for ourselves whether an opening is good or not. So we cannot rely on our thinking ability until we reach master... we have to just ignore what we think we know about the game - all logic about the position, engine eval, stats, everything... simply because we are not masters. That is an argument for dunces.

The player in the OP may be high rated, but he was also beaten in that game by a player much lower rated, and he played the opening very badly... he demonstrated a lack of very basic understanding of the sicilian. You wouldn't need to play like an engine not to make those mistakes, you'd just need a basic understanding of the position, actually... What this proves, if anything, is that you can get somewhat high rated without a full opening understanding... at least when it comes to sidelines. And this we already know. But it also proves that this will lose you some games, as it did in this case...

But if you want to answer the question of whether the Smith Morra is effective on a practical level at a certain elo all you need to do is look at the winrates. Which I just posted. So I don't even see your point here. It's not performing well even at 2000 elo on lichess.

Sorry, no.

OK I agree with you on alot of that. But first of the player in the post above is rated higher than you in every metric of the game and you are trashing their play, and speaking with authority about the opening with which they were defeated.

You can say Hikaru denounces the smith morra all you want and I am sure he does. He is not going to play it in classical against top players. But like I said you can go on youtube right now and watch a video of him beating a 3100 player twice with the opening, and he went 1-1 against caruana with it. You and I will never be at that level and if we are Im sure we wont be playing the smith morra gambit.

Openings are what you make of them, and I am probably a 2400 with some and a 900 with others. Many GMs say openings pretty much dont matter at all. I watched a video of finegold where he talks about playing the morra up until IM and he is still a big proponent of openings not mattering.

If you get too rigid with theory and engine scoring you become Mr Metallic from Silman's book. Smith morra is fun, it works, and it results in positions that I can play well quickly.

I'm trashing his play in that specific game based on logic about the position... And I doubt his rating for that particular game would have been evaluated very high... I can tell you that his mistakes in that game are not difficult to identify or correct. It's a fact that many relatively high rated players are bad at openings... that player might have taken the advice to ignore openings for a while for all I know. Or he could just have ignored the Smith Morra in favor of other things...

We wouldn't count on this mishandling happening frequently because we can see in the stats that it isn't happening frequently. And also... you are putting the game in your opponents hands by doing this, and taking it out of your hands - if he knows the line he probably wins otherwise he could lose.

We're here discussing openings and we're asking ourselves whether this opening is good. The opening isn't working, it's not even working at 2000 elo on lichess it's getting owned. Nakamura can win with anything, sure... I saw him owning GMs with 1. f3 for a while. But that's just Nakamura it's a separate issue from whether this opening is good... and the reason your high rated opponent in the OP lost is because he had no idea how to play the opening... opening knowledge clearly makes a difference. I think Finegold argued it doesn't matter for beginners, but I don't think he'd argue for a 2000 rated player it still doesn't matter and that they should just ignore openings. And if he did argue that I'd ignore him since it makes no sense and I could easily find other GMs saying the opposite. GMs rarely even agree with one another half the time so how can we just listen to them without thinking for ourselves about things?

If an opening has a 70% loss rate what it probably means is your effective elo is reduced by 150 or so. So if your real skill is at 2000... you will win 50% of your games against 1850s, or something like that. So your real elo is obviously directly predicting your performance regardless... But my point is you are handicapping yourself with a simple decision, and why do that? The goal of choosing a good opening you could say is to artificially boost your elo. Or at least not to handcap yourself. And good openings is what this sub-forum is all about...

If you don't want to put effort into learning almost any theory whatsoever, not even like.. the theory in the bowdler attack, it could make sense to go with the Smith Morra simply because it leads to the same very basic setup every game, the attack is pre-made and you can play the position. That is the most credit I can give the opening... i.e. that it actually can work for someone who wants to play bad.

Here is a SMG rapid game played at the highest level, which is extrtremely useful to study.

- No existing theory whatsoever.

- White's reaction to one of the most popular Black setups is quite unconventional (the computer does suggest the quiet Bf4/Be2 setup, but few games have been played like that) but relying on very solid positional foundation: White just goes for rapid, sound development creating no direct threats, but he is rightly assuming that mid-term Black will be forced to make some positional concessions to deal with the pressure on the dark central and queenside squares.

- One does not have to memorize ANYTHING, just have a good positional instict.

- The follow up is exactly what one can expect from a chess game, even at the highest level: Both sides making slight tactical, or positional mistakes, and finally the game being decided by the very same tactical pattern that was created in the #1 game after the horrible 14...b5? (effectively Black's first, and last mistake in that game): A deadly pin which cannot be broken by any sane means.

Verdict: We do have some excellent reasons to laugh our asses off when the ABC internet troll proudly declares that "the Smith-Morra gambit is bad".

I can use your same logic to claim the bongcloud is a good opening... proof would be this bongcloud game from Nakamura where he crushes a 2700... but no one would ever really claim the Bongcloud is good since it'd be patently absurd, and since you aren't Nakamura you wouldn't expect the same good results from this... What your game shows is that, at top GM level, players are looking for increasingly uncommon moves and ignoring theory and eval... to go for positions they understand while the opponent is unfamiliar... it's why magnus plays 1. a3 on the first move, and moves nothing but pawns for the first 6 moves, then crushes Kramnik... it's not how regular players play chess since their opponents aren't prepared 20-30 moves deep for the regular lines... very rarely do I even run into the mainlines in the openings I play... doing this would just lead a normal player to inferior positions with no real benefit -

This is a 3'+2" blitz game, where everything goes, and vastly different from 15'+3" or 15'+10" rapid games which are "real chess".

Heck, in blitz and bullet one can even play crap like the Meadow Hay (1.a4 e5 2.Ra3) and get away with it, and there is even a paid course about it! (Chessbase offered the course for free for the first couple of weeks).

I would expect something smarter to defend your hopeless case, but alas, logic isn't something that everyone posesses.

Nakamura has played the bongcloud on stream all the way up to 3000 elo... it's top GM level, his blitz games at that level are equivalent to the rapid games of most GMs in the quality... some people say he's the best blitz player in the world and he's facing off against other amazing blitz players. Also... the database has a game from Magnus attempting the bongcloud against Nakamura in a rapid game in a tournament setting. In general top GMs play unusual moves in rapid as well as blitz, they have to do that to avoid draws. Now, if this were the candidates tournament and a classical game or something... we wouldn't see a bongcloud. But we wouldn't see a Smith Morra there either.

The argument is not that the bongcloud is just as good as this sideline in the smith morra... your sideline is almost equal objectively, just slightly better for black... the bongcloud is significantly better for black. What this does show is the core logic of your argument - Nakamura played it and beat top players with it > therefor it's good... is nonsense. And your whole argument here is a complete deferral of your thinking to authorities. Apparently you believe this is an exemplification of intelligence, I really don't think so but you can go on believing that. 

As for the novel Smith Morra position - if you want a positional game with pressure there are many other ways of achieving that in the sicilian where you get actually more pressure without going down the pawn. Being down a pawn you will be on a timer, forced to play sharply and make something happen. Nakamura did an amazing job introducing complications that game... most people aren't going to find those moves. The game is going to cut against you in terms of how forgiving it is, who it favors and disfavors... And if you don't have this burst of tempo leading to a strong early attack... you're ceding the strongest argument that's traditionally been made in favor of the Smith Morra setup... basically acknowledging that white doesn't get adequate initiative. But you have to cede that because the results make it clear... So now what... you just play inferior positional games that are equal and which cut against you because you're down a pawn, but they're extremely novel, to throw off club players who largely don't know the lines anyway, and that's good why? 

I don't see why you'd want to immediately cede equality or worse in the sicilian when there are brutally punishing lines you can play where white enjoys 70%+ winrates, sometimes even as high as 80%... where white doesn't compromise or go down a pawn and has tremendous pressure the entire game. Except maybe at higher level when your opponents know the lines out to move 30 and can draw the game because they're an amazing player. 

Who cares what "some people say". Facts say that he has never won the FIDE World blitz championship.

Whether he's the best or one of the best is really irrelevant for your argument.

Well I'm not sure he's still playing at NM level, you can get NM once in your life and retain the title forever... but he was way ahead until he blundered, though you did well to capitalize on it. But he also made some big mistakes throughout.

Every sicilian player has experienced finally pushing d5, or liquidating the d pawn (he should have liquidated it in this game since it trades off his bottled up pieces, i.e. his rook on d7 which is just cramping everything) and having essentially the dream sicilian position... but then underestimating the kingside attack followup, with d5 closing up the center and whites pieces rotating to the kingside. This can happen in actually most sicilian openings after d5 is pushed. For example.... the same thing happens in most games in the four knights / taimanov where white plays a sideline and you're able to push d5 almost immediately... both of which I used to play.

Here in the Smith Morra you have some early initiative in this attack due to Ng5 applying more immediate pressure than Nd4, and since you liquidated c3 Bc2 is possible which eyes the kingside. Trouble is black can play h6 and prevent Ng5, and you've also lost multiple tempos in rerouting the bishop to Bc2. Furthermore, you kingside castled and your knight blocks your f pawn, so you can't really back up the attack with pawn pushes. The attack is going to break through quickly or fizzle out.

Here black relinquished control over g5 when he moved his bishop, which also removed a defender from his kingside. And he gave you tempo for Bc2 when he played Na4... also misplacing his knight. Be7 was also inefficient to begin with since it left him nowhere to develop his knight, Bc5 / h6 / Ne7 would have been more efficient. Black just needed to understand the danger of the kingside attack and play better. What black needs to do in this scenario is trade pieces and move his pieces toward the kingside, or distract your pieces away from the kingside if possible.

He blundered... which can happen when you're under pressure, but really if he played it right he wouldn't have been under the same pressure.

It's just a lesson that sicilian players have to learn, but it's a lesson that applies after you've pushed d5 (or liquidated it) and achieved "the dream" in the sicilian. I don't think that giving black his entire goal in the sicilian while also going down a pawn, and then counting on him to screw it up is a good way to fight the sicilian... but even if you do want to do it this way - you can get stronger attacks of a similar nature in other sidelines, where you may allow d5 but can still queenside castle and attack the kingside with pawns, where you aren't just down a pawn, where h6 doesn't prevent your knight from activating, where you play Bd3 directly instead of losing 2 tempos via Bc4 > Bb3 > Bc2... etc.

I'm sure it will sometimes work - statistically it's not working reliably, that's just the bottom line really.

He also should never have pushed d6 and done that odd rook maneuver to begin with, that wasted time but still worked out okay for him.

Despite all these mistakes he was actually still either winning or completely equal right up until he blundered.

At first I thought the game was shaping up to be a esserman vs van wely position but he played Be7 instead of f6. Then I could tell he was had the advantage out of the opening with his bishop pin and honestly I was a little surprised I when I won. My opponent was a NM but yes hes only 1925 blitz and I have played some NMs that were 2600+ that absolutely stomped me. Hey thats blitz... and I have beaten other NMs and CMs before in short time controls.

Finegolds video on the smith morra is a perfect breakdown in my opinion. He says if 2 super computers play the accepted white will probably be under 50%. But he still says people should play it if they like it. He also introduced me to IM esserman who is an absolute smith morra madman who has beat a ton of GMs including van wely who was ~20th in the world at the time. It really is a true gambit in that you have to rely on advanced players not knowing it. But if it is somewhat uncommon and you know how to play it, youre going to run into many players even at high levels that dont bother to study it deeply. Finegold recommends just not accepting the gambit period. Even GMs are at risk accepting the gambit against a guy like esserman. Play the alapin or go into the other variations instead. I have many games with the alapin so that is perfectly fine with me. Also from the video Ben says "if you lose with white in the accepted its just a long game and you lose when you're down a pawn." "When you win it looks like your opponent doesn't know how to play chess." Even if you can't mate your opponent as white you have to play pretty badly to not at least come up a pawn or a huge positional advantage as white with that big of a lead in development.