Englund Gambit managed to get me through 1900 rapid

The Englund is bad, agreed.

Well I play odd lines as well, I just am not a fan of the Smith Morra since I think it's a bad approach to the sicilian specifically, for reasons I've explained. For realizing this it helps if you're a sicilian player. Sicilian is not an easy nut to crack. Fantasy is good though (I prefer the accelerated panov but fantasy is one of the top options), Budapest is fine. Vienna is also my preferred line in e4/e5. I wouldn't really consider the Tarrasch french a sideline but there's not alot you can do against the french. The wing gambit is one good attempt. But these days I've just been playing the Tarrasch against the french.

Yeah, the French are one of the most annoying openings to play against, but it's nice to know that outside of the Alekhine/Silician thing, we play similar openings.

Also, who keeps downvoting our posts and why?

You can usually count on the most rational posts to get the most downvotes on this site. There are just some retards on this site.

I actually played the nimzowitsch sicilian for quite a while, which is a close cousin to Alekhines.

I'm not playing e4 these days but if I was going to play an anti-sicilian repertoire I'd probably play the Portsmouth + the Westerenin or the e6 wing attack + probably the Chekhover or possibly another delayed wing attack.

I gave up on the morra for now as I just like the delayed alapin better, or I avoid the Sicilian altogether and play the jobava london. I will say if you just play the morra to avoid studying Sicilian theory it will stop working around 2000 and you will lose many games from being down a pawn. But if you study it extensively, and take a course like essermans mayhem in the morra it can be played at the gm level. He has beaten some of the best players in the world with the morra. I do feel like playing it for 6 months and studying it for a bit made my tactics much much better as you pretty much have to have good tactics to play it or you will lose every game lol. I think it’s better than the Englund though. I watched a few videos on the Englund when I started playing d4 and rarely lose to it even against much higher players that use it as a disrespect opening.

Well you're slowing coming around then.

Alapin is good but I just find it too boring to play. It's like the french in that respect. I understand why people play it. I've even resorted to lines I think win less than the main lines just to spice it up for myself.

I think you can play almost anything if you study it very deeply. The question is what do you want to study deeply and why. The answer will vary some from one person to the next. The Smith Morra is convenient in that it gives you something you can bite off and study deeply without an enormous amount of effort. But that doesn't pay off long term. And if you really want to devote yourself to really mastering the line in amazing depth... the way Esserman has, at that point I ask the question why don't you just learn a good opening? You're putting tremendous effort in at that point. The same amount of effort in a truly novel line will yield greater benefits, and there are many such lines.

Some people talk without having the faintest idea.

If you've spent your whole life studying the Sicilian with white, the open and closed variations, memorizing a thousand lines, understanding everything...

Then one day you decide to seriously study the Morra Gambit.

Just like with the previous openings, and you discover that you win a lot more games than with the open and closed.

Then you realize you've been deceived your whole life. You've been wasting your time studying the same things that most normies in the Matrix do.

When it's much more fun and effective to play gambits and provocative openings like the Englund or the Morra.

Wake Up Sheeple !

Again, you're speaking much like a person who takes a dump in a box and puts it in an art gallery, then calls themself an artist. The sicilian is absolutely enormous, there are not just "the open and closed lines", there are countless other lines including many anti-sicilian lines, vs. pretty much 1 main line in the Smith Morra which we sicilian players see in 6% of our games, and already have memorized long ago since there are very few deviations. I guarantee you that below 2000 the average sicilian player reaches the Smith Morra move-8 position more than they reach their mainline open position. So where do you think the greater likelihood of throwing the opponent off lies - in 1 line they see 6% of the time, or any one of those thousand lines they're supposed to have memorized? The answer is very obvious.

Precisely, if they play it 6% of the time, they have less practice.

That's why I don't play the f4 e5 Gambit;

it's very fun, but I know for a fact that the Bird player has more experience than I do in that line, so it's not a good strategy to play e5 against f4 for that reason.

The Sicilian player almost never faces the Morra, even if they've studied it thoroughly. When they see it in practice, they won't even remember it or be aware of the novelties in that line.

For that reason, the Morra player has the advantage and initiative from the start.

No, dunce, they don't have less experience in the Smith Morra, since whatever "open" sicilian they play consists of at least a hundred distinct lines as you've just pointed out yourself, i.e. you can take that higher percentage of occurrence and divide it by 100, whereas the Smith Morra is usually the same line by move 8, and if it isn't you're making quite a concession since you're on a timer due to being down a pawn / being forced to mount an early kingside attack. Furthermore, you can play any number of the better anti-sicilians available, which don't begin on move 2 or wind up in the same position by move 8 every game.

What you're expressing is ultimately your feeling of inadequacy at facing the Sicilian, since you just assume the Sicilian player will always outgun you and you can never catch up. But your inadequacy is so severe that you don't realize what other options exist besides the Smith Morra. 
Outgunned - probably true in the open lines, but there are far better anti-sicilians than the Smith Morra. I've already named many.

Of course, whites win percentage is way higher in the open lines regardless of any experience differential, and in the toilet in the Smith Morra, so that kind of refutes the whole line of reasoning. You would be amazed how rarely black actually encounters someone with the guts to play the mainest open lines nowdays. It's actually very rare. Except in something well known like the Najdorf. I played the Nimzowitsch Sicilian for a while, I encountered the main line probably 3 times out of a hundred games. It's a forcing line that any white player could have played if they just knew the first 8 moves.

You are in theory when you play the Smith Morra.

But if your philosophy is to avoid ever being in the opponents theory you shouldn't be playing e4/e5 to begin with, if you really want to talk seriously.

The Smith-Morra Dutch Variation is also an interesting possibility, and I used to play that line but quit and turned to just playing 4.Nxc3 because Qb6 was SO annoying.

Precisely because I have more knowledge than you in the open Sicilian with white, can affirm that in rapid games, it’s better for the white player to play something different.

It’s wiser not to enter your opponent’s territory even if you know more than they do, because they have more experience than you.

In a classical time control game, I wouldn’t recommend the Morra, but in rapid, it’s clearly a better option.

That line with a6-b5 and Nc6, which most Sicilian players play and gives black such good results, doesn’t worry me. I’ve refuted it in practice.

Many Sicilian players think they’re very clever, but they don’t understand that I have more experience in the Morra than they do. I’m aware of all the novelties and what works best for white.

It’s like the Chicago variation of the Morra, passing the rook from Ra7 to Rd7. A very clever idea from black, but if white knows the theory, it blows it up.

Well in the Smith Morra, at 2200 level rapid, black has a 20% higher winrate than white by move 8. And at 2500 level that gap extends to 39%. So clearly it isn't the best option in rapid. Can you name any other sicilian line where black is outscoring white by 39%? That's one of the worst scores I am aware of. Presumably those white players have the same "advantage" from the line that you have.

When you're arguing adamantly against what raw data says it's time to reassess your argument.

You can spend a lifetime studying the Smith morra, sure - at that point I just ask why didn't you choose a better anti-sicilian to devote your life to.

That's because most Morra players with white play it badly.

Some think the Morra is just playing Bc4 - Qe2, 0-0, and Rd1, and with that, they can happily play the line.

At higher levels, black players have good knowledge. They’ll play the Taylor Defense, the one you mentioned before with a6-b5, the Chicago Defense , the professional one with Cge7, or the simple Bc5 / Bb4.

If white doesn't know anything, they’re going to end up worse in many of these lines.

Well they're 2500 rapid players. You can go deep or find novelties in other lines as well, including any anti-sicilian or open sicilian you can name... the Smith Morra doesn't have a monopoly on this. Infact... you're more restricted since you're down a pawn and on a timer. Novelties perform better but it's tangential to the conversation. In time those novelties become known, they get prepared for, and the cycle repeats... If you closely follow Esserman or someone who's spent their life studying the Smith Morra, and copy all their latest novelties, you will win games I'm sure. You could have done the same thing in most other lines, it's not really an argument the line is good, more of an argument that you can make anything work if you put in the effort.
And at some point raw skill kicks in and starts to predict outcomes better than the opening.