I don't think this is that good of an opening. White immediately accepts a backwards d-pawn and commits to spending an inordinate amount of time preparing d2-d4 to fix this. For me, this doesn't show enough respect for white's initial advantage.
i dont fix the backwards pawn & i win most ofmy games as white
Openings named after animals more often than not are bad, and unfortunately this one is no exception. After something like Bc5, Nc6, d6 and f5 Black is probably slightly better already.
This Whale Opening just seems like a bad move order of the well known Botvinnik Setup in the English. The Setup works well in cases where Black fianchettoes his bishop early, but with this move order, after Bc5, c4 is just not good.
This topic is dumb.
So here's an actual game I played online. I name white's opening pawn setup the whale opening
None of these structures actually look like whales lol
Here's a wild game where the Whale wins. Shootout where white beats black to the punch by getting knight to D5 first. https://chesstempo.com/gamedb/game/2008730/rnbqkbnr/pppp1ppp/8/4p3/2P1P3/8/PP1P1PPP/RNBQKBNR%20b%20KQkq%20c3%200%202