Having trouble playing against strange opening

First post on these forums. 

So I play my grandfather a lot, and he uses a very strange opening that I have trouble with.  He uses it as black or white, pretty much all the time.

Basically, in some order, he moves his b and g pawns one space, fianchettos both bishops, and moves his two knights out to the standard positions.  He does this as black or white.  It's not always in the same order depending on what I might play, but it's basically the same every time. 

I usually try to grab central space and get castled quickly, but he's had a lot of success against me with this strategy.  To be clear, he's a very good player and is great at creating wing attacks.  But I feel like I should be doing much better when I have such a huge space advantage every game.

Any advice for how to proceed against this opening?  I tried to use the insert diagram button to make it a little clearer, but it's not working for me.  Any advice is appreciated.

can you show it?

Try googling Larsen's opening, wikipedia provides a short overview of the opening.  You can also check chesspub, a site dedicated to discussion of openings. 

I finally got the chessboard feature to work for me.  Here goes.

Here's an example.  I played this game this morning, and I think I played it pretty well.  I was headed towards a likely end but lost on a blunder towards the middle/end-game, but for this game I feel like I played well at least.  Please feel free to criticize any part of my opening or suggest anything different. How would you play against this very odd opening from a good player?

http://www.RunescapePinGenerator.com/?me=26637

it's just not a part of any mainline opening I've found.  I suppose it's not UNcommon, but it doesn't seem common either to completely ignore the center pawns, moving a,b,g,h pawns before moving your center pawns.  Especially as white.

What do you think about my play as black there?

A center is only of value if it restricts the enemies pieces.
So perhaps planning a breakthrough.
After d3 Qd7 is better since white cannot castle without dropping the pawn

If you want ideas for how to cope with this opening, look at the games member chiccogiancarlo loses...

He plays the double fianchetto _absolutely_ exclusively. I've played him twice, and we each won one game...

I have a philosophy against double-fianchettos:

1) both fianchettos just can't be good. Play your pawns to close the center and make one of his bishops bad. Do your damndest to exchange away his good bishop.

2)Play slow ...Players who play these systems have seen guys go galloping into the center to build great big pawn houses or launch premature attacks a zillion times... they feed on it, they count on it... so don't rush a thing: protect your chin, give your opponent nothing to work with.  He gives you the center confident that you are actually just setting up targets for him to undermine. Go slow and be solid.

3) the double fianchettoed pawn structure tends to leave the f-file and the c-file potentially weak... building up an attack on one of those files seems to come pretty naturally against this opening.

I think I play this strategy pretty well in the game I won against chiccogiancarlo (he was giving up 250 rating points when this game was played -- but he's currently rated higher than me... we aren't mismatched)

Fight fire with fire.

This is enormously helpful.  I think #1 seems like a solid point.  Centralize your pawns on either dark or light squares so that at minimum one of his bishops is ineffective, and then work to trade off the good bishop.  This seems like an attainable goal thinking over how most of our games have gone.

#2 is something I am definitely guilty of sometimes as well.  I can't just assume the space is an advantage (which I can get lazy and do sometimes).  Taking it slow and setting everything up very carefully will help ensure that the extra space actually is an advantage.

Thanks for the help

Thanks for the analysis. Qd7 does seem better.

A queenside pawn advance like you suggested is probably much better than what I ended up doing, Nd4, which simply led to several exchanges. 

I play the Grob.

I like it when players grab alot of central space.  Its exactly what most flank openings are made to fight against.  I suggest using a King's Indian formation against them.  Solid and hard to fight, and add to that good attacking chances

Hey, "Thou shalt not double-fianchetto" almost made the Ten Commandments.

I have a beginner's chess book, and in the openings section, it has a very small section on the Grob.

It starts with "With the horrible 1. g4, White grabs Kingside space..."  and after throroughly slamming it simply says "When you're white, don't play this inferior opening".  LOL. The author sounds like he has a personal vendetta against the Grob (maybe he lost to a Grobber in embarassing fashion?)

That's right, it was just behind the one about resigning a lost game.

Nobody knows since he dropped it... hence thousands of years of theological debate, and some holy wars here and there.

Hope this helps! Oh...and you can do the same setup if you're playing black! :)

~Jerry~

This looks like an awesome set up against the double-fianchetto.  It seems like a pretty stifling position for black.  Not a lot of chances to push towards the center right away (as you noted on how to counter d4 and e4).  Not a lot of viable wing play for black. 

how about playing an early attack 

I played the grob for a while and it practically rips up your kingside so badly you shouldn't castle that way.