Englund Gambit managed to get me through 1900 rapid

I avoid it because I'm not going to spend the time to learn an opening which if I'm not well versed in theory, I might lose to some ridiculous tactics. I score well enough in the alapin anyways, and there are more critical lines to learn than the smith morra.

It takes very little effort to learn the theory, in 85% of games it's going to be the same main line, that's one of the reasons it's such a crap opening. And the alapin is very boring.

A 20% higher winrate for black than white indicates something significant. When the opening occurs in 6% of sicilian games that's also pretty significant.

The effort required to learn a sharp opening that may or may not even happen is always at risk of being forgotten or misremembered. I also never want to play into anything the opponent wants. Maybe he’ll be happy for the Alapin, but the morra player is always going to want to play a morra. I do very well in boring positions.

My goal isn’t to play good moves, it’s to win. Practically speaking, I score well in symmetrical positions and endgames, even if I may not like the latter. And since I like winning, I don’t feel a particular need to learn morra theory.

It's not a rich position. It's not difficult to remember. 
You could have learned it out to move 10 for 85% of the games in the time it's taken you to write out the responses in this thread. That is how predictable it is. Go look. You're up a pawn, his attack is nothing, it's a sicilian pawn structure where you can just push d6 or d5 whenever you like, or not... it's not difficult. For proof - black is winning at a 20% higher rate than white at high elo levels. That is all the proof we need that the position is not burdensome.

The Smith Morra player doesn't know what they want. Better to just accept and play into their delusions.

I don’t enjoy open positions. I also don’t enjoy memorizing theory for openings where I score well with a different approach. Lastly, when I spend time to learn chess, I prefer not to spend it on something that doesn’t need fixing.

Do you know how to reach the closed line of the ruy lopez?

You don't play the Ruy Lopez primarily, but I'm sure you could play it out to 7 move if needed. Is that an ongoing tax on your memory? No, you just know the basic main line. You don't know the subtleties, true....

The Smith Morra main line has 2 noteworthy branches which almost always transpose back into the same line. You're talking about "saving your memory" in a position that is pretty much just one line from move 2 out to move 8. After move 8... there's like 3 branches, just a couple different move combinations, but that's it. You've made it to move 10, the attack is basically over, you have an advantage and you've used... very few braincells. That is how lame this opening is.

You don't really need to know theory at this point, you can just play a sicilian. You're the one in charge.

Actually I could probably play the moves, but I don’t know the name of the “closed ruy Lopez”. I know some mainline stuff with like the na5 c5 and qc7, but I remember that from playing through master games that had nothing to do with the opening. I didn’t go around specifically learning the Lopez to never play it.

I actually do have a morra line memorized. I saw two games by esserman, and he destroyed both of his opponents, one of which is the current world champion. So I’d rather not take part in this.

The reason that's so noteworthy is it happened once. When the WC loses to any other line we don't say *gasp* hey look this line won a game! You know, like it's a miracle or something. But in this case I guess it is.
Bottom line is, at 2500 elo in rapid, white is scoring 26% and black is 65%. That is so atrocious. We really don't need to speculate much further.
But yes there are those 26% of games, they do happen. That is true!

I haven't played the Ruy Lopez since I was a beginner rated like 1400 or something, and only briefly did I play it... but I was able to play the moves of the closed out to move 9 before going wrong. Instead of 9. d4 the more common move is 9. h3. Not so hard when you don't have to worry about deviations -

Wow I’m impressed you know so much theory @crazedrat1000. I know a few openings and traps and that’s it lol.

9.d4 is a major variation (Yates Variation) played in thousands and thousands of games at every level.

I've put all my focus into the opening and ignored the rest of the game so far. It's just the incremental systematic approach I've chosen to take. Although I'm sort of reaching the point of branching out and tackling the midgame, but I'm not quite done with the opening yet. It's very enormous. 
I may actually do the endgame before the midgame though, not sure. Endgame is simpler. Simpler is better.

Imagine downvoting someone just engaging in 1-on-1 conversation with someone else - what a loser you'd have to be!

I mean the opening is the least important part of chess. I barely focus on it and am 2000. I only study like 1 opening for black.

That's merely your opinion, based on whatever approach to the game you've decided works for you. If you want to be good you must master all the aspects so it's an irrelevant debate, but you have to start somewhere. And it's not so easy to separate the game phases from one another, they lead into one another. For example, if you want to have a broad understanding of middlegame planning a broad understanding of openings is a good place to start from. You can often understand a position by comparing it with other similar known positions. And the time invested in playing an opening is non-trivial, if you start with the right ones you want to play... it's going to save you time. But if you don't know the opening, you don't know the lines you want to play... well, maybe you just end up playing a particular line for years only to abandon it later on.

No, I mean I studied one opening and all the lines for black, such as the Alekhine and Budapest, and came up with a studying theory with all the responses to 1.e4. I meant to imply that you don't need a vast opening knowledge to be good at chess, as someone once said "I don't fear someone who practiced 10,000 moves once, I fear one who practiced one move 10,000 times."

You eventually study one line but you have to figure out what the line will be, which requires a broader understanding and some experimentation. Unless you're just content in being permanently set on one mostly arbitrary decision you made before you fully understood things. I do think there is some benefit to knowing multiple lines, though. You learn patterns in all these openings, much of chess is pattern recognition. And you learn flexible planning.

Unless you play very sharp forcing early deviations (which you tend to do) there are often many sidelines that end up resembling lines which aren't your main line. For example... many french-like or caro-kann like pawn structures can arise if black inserts the moves e6 or c6 into whatever random line they happened to play... understanding these openings helps you respond well in these scenarios.

I play interesting openings, to say the least, the Fantasy against the Caro, the Smith-Morra against the Silician, the Tarrasch against the French, I just like playing sidelines, and hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I think it’s a bad opening but that doesn’t make it any less annoying. It’s like the d4 scandi.