Bully Queens

Grrr. I can't stand bully queens. You know the type. They come out with their queens raging, ready to unleash some unabashedly aggressive destruction. They flaunt their queen as the power tool that she is, only to be countered in advance by the more savvy.

Then, when their initial plans are foibled, they slide to the other side and attempt to wreak havoc on your defenseless sitting ducks, er, pieces. If you know better, then you can block or corner her and teach that ***** a lesson.

Fine. OK. I get it. It's a decent opening and forces your opponent's moves. The problem I have is that this dumb opening is practically the only one I encounter. I can defend myself properly, but grrr, can we get a little variety? Do you happen to know *aaany* other openings?

Does anyone else here share my frustration? 

It does get on my nerves a bit

From my personal experience, when you face an opponent who brings his queen out early, for the most part you can just develop normally. It's very easy to make sure that all your pieces and pawns are protected when you're developing, so the queen can't threaten them. Often times your normal development moves will also attack your opponent's queen, making him lose tempo. The only thing you have to be careful of (aside from dropping pieces) is when your opponent tries to link up his queen and minor pieces (for ex. an attack on f2/f7).

Does this happen at the end of the game or the beginning? If it happens at the end, then basically you've lost and should resign. If it happens at the beginning, you're probably not using your Knights and Bishops to their full potential. If you're really fed up with this, just exchange Queens.

For ex:

My usual response against the Scandinavian Defense:

My usual response against an attempted Scholar's Mate:

True... but at my level 3. Qe5 is pretty popular, since superficially it seems like black maintains the initiative.

I must have played through that first variation exactly as you play it at least about 200 times or so.  Sometimes I'll push d4 instead of nf3, but in my experience nf3 is better, though everything seems to work fine and, once I'm safe, I make it a point to chase their queen around for the next 10 moves or so to make them rethink that opening.

This was the most abnoxious version I've envountered yet. Thanks for posting solutions to the Scandanavian Defense and Scholars Mate! I'm happy to be learning something.

That is not the preffered scandanavian line, usually it is something more like this: 

Its not "my line" it is the line people that is preffered by people who play the Scandanavian, ie club players and above. 

Better to just take back the pawn with 3...Nxd5 if White plays 3. Nc3.  That's kind of the point of playing 2...Nf6 instead of taking back with the queen immediately.  Now if White chooses to exchange knights on d5 and the queen is forced to recapture, there's no more Nc3 to harass the queen.

3...e6 (the Icelandic or Palme Gambit) is better if White has tried to hold the pawn with 3. c4.

I see what you are saying, I guess my point was that the Scandanavian was not a Queen bully opening and that the player above might have run into Queen bullies who just accidentally played a Scandanavian line, a weak looking line too. But you are right, I was mistaken, the e6 is a better response to c4 than to Nc3