A solid smith morra accepted as white

I like Ben personally but I find his advice such as "completely ignore openings" dubious on many levels. As for this advice to not accept the Smith Morra - I don't know what motivated that advice, he could be playing psychology and thinking since the Smith Morra player wants an attacking game forcing him to play a grindy alapin is a good strategy. He could also just want to compact the amount of theory people need to learn... but if he's legitimately suggesting to fear the Smith Morra - it's just another piece of advice from Ben that I'll be ignoring, I'll take the 70%+ winrate as black thanks Ben.

What I fear as a sicilian player is a person who isn't afraid to play the main lines. And that's actually very rare, believe it or not. But if I'm getting some immediate equality in the sicilian (or a big advantage in this case) that is a huge relief, and I can tell you the game is alot easier. That's not an engine-motivated assessment, it is a human assessment. At this elo I've faced more Smith Morras than I have richter-rauzers.

But even if not the main lines - anti-sicilians such as the Grand Prix or Rossolimo or even the alapin are much more challenging.

He wrote a book on the smith morra as black. I just watched a video of magnus (2852) losing as black to the smith morra against shimanov (2581) in rapid in the pro chess league on agadmators channel. I feel like if you go against someone that actually knows how to play the opening (I wouldn't qualify myself as one of them yet), you will regret accepting the gambit lol. In short time controls or even long time controls you're going to get fatigued trying to stay out of trouble if you can even manage to. Meanwhile your opponent is just premoving because they know deadly traps that can be insanely hard to see. I would much rather be on the white side of that, rather than let my opponent run a "system" type approach 30 moves deep on their open sicilian. It must just suit my playstyle because I play the italian as white, idk i like the morra and im going to stick with it for awhile. Overall in the 1500 games on lichess surveyed at that rating it might be 36% or whatever (plus whatever percentage of draws), but in the right hands I bet that percentage is much higher. I think essermans 60% or so against IMs and GMs.

Hikaru advises people to just accept the gambit and based on the results I agree with that. For every GM with an opinion there's another GM with a conflicting opinion.

I'd need to see the game of Magnus you're referring to before I comment about it. Though I will say that you can probably find games online of Magnus crushing the Smith Morra if you're looking for that, he's on record playing thousands of games at this point.

You can't play the sicilian algorithmically for 30 moves like that. Except in very specific lines against certain sicilians, but if you want to deviate from that you are more than able to do so. The deepest any normal, well booked human will go is 12-15 moves max, except maybe for the very most forcing main lines. And if you understand the opening and know what to play to challenge your opponents understanding of theory.. you can get them out of prep alot earlier than that. But they're going to, in most cases, be more prepared against the Smith Morra than whatever strange line you dig up in an open position - again, Smith Morra is common, it's a broad misconception that you're throwing off the opponent with this opening. Some opponents won't prepare against it because they don't take it seriously... but they probably generally aren't that well prepared, and they will still see it more often than they see most of the specific lines in their open sicilian.

There are probably 80 different lines in the classical sicilian that I'm supposed to memorize. And I reach the open probably 50% of the time at the current elo. Here in the Smith Morra there's like... 1 line that 90% of Smith Morra players play, and 7% of players play the Smith Morra. And the line they play doesn't contain many deviations... I know the exact setup to play against it up to move 12 or so, and I haven't put really much effort into it yet... I'm in no danger of forgetting the line, though. If you quizzed me on some random open sicilian line out of the 80 or so available I do not know if I'll remember it, probably not as of now. I probably have over a year worth of daily, consistent work before I'm even finished fully developing my repertoire in the sicilian, and who knows how much longer it'll take to memorize. Alot of the positions you don't even really play purely from memory, it reaches a point where concepts have to take over. But as white, when you have the initiative you can choose the variation and this allows you to limit the lines you need to know. And you don' thave to learn the whole open sicilian at once, you can easily just mix in anti-sicilians.

But even if I wanted an anti-sicilian there are much better options. Like there are delayed wing gambits... the delayed wing gambit against the old sicilian (2... Nc6) is actually scoring very well. There are lines with an early b3... against 2... d6 there's the princ variation. There's the mengarini variation... there's the delayed alapin against 2... e6, there's also a wing gambit against that which is scoring well... There's the chekhover variation. Hell there are even delayed versions of the smith morra (though they still suck, but some are better than playing it on move 2).