How not not to play the opening... from the lunatic genius of Veselin Topalov

Here's a lesson guaranteed to lower the rating of beginners and others by at least 50 points. 

So, we've all learned about not moving the same piece twice in the opening and all about how important it is to "develop" -- so let's add nuance to this wisdom:  it's at least 1/2 nonsense. Development is nice if you don't know what else to do... and most of us don't -- but if you've got sharp ideas and amazing vision and are moving your pieces with real purpose you can get away with murder... Alehkine blew rule-bound people's minds into little bits with his Alekhine's Defense, which flouts every opening "principle" possible. 

Here, in this game (from contemporary madman and world champion Veselin Topalov) -- White ventilates his kingside pawns, develops next to nothing and  when not moving his Queenside N is rushing the enemy lines with an unsupported pawn storm... he loses his Queen, and oh yeah, crushes the poor bloke playing black. (Oops sorry... several annotations come a 1/2 move early in the game below.)

*Kid's don't try this at home. Professional driver on a closed course. 

wow..... after the pesky bishop is gone black is done for. i see... 23. Rxc8 Rxc8 24. Nf5++ and forks king and queen. ( oh and by the way, it's checkmate :)

 Indeed! and Rg4 is checkmate as well.  There's no forced mate that I can find, though, black's best here is perhaps Qxf3 or Qxg1... it's all quite hopeless.