Is the Smith-Morra Gambit an amateur's opening?

Is this opening one that can be played confidently at the highest levels, or is it just a club player's way of avoiding main line sicilians?

I think the SMG is not correct. If black has done his homework well white will not get sufficient compensation for the sacrified pawn. Therefore you don´t see the SMG on grandmaster level.  

Didn't Nigel Short complain recently about being an SMG practitioner in his youth? I may have read it in a New In Chess issue... He regrets wasting time on this variation.

It's a garbage opening. I played it a lot and font get good positions out of it. Save your time.

Ok looks like there's a consensus here

Give it some time...

I recommend Marc Essermans Mayhem in the Morra book. It opened my eyes to just how lethal the opening is. It's true that it is essentially a drawn opening, but it is extremely hard to achieve.

Here it is again, why does everyone call it the "good alapin line"? What is so bad about the early d4?

Well, five of swords has a good point.The morra does not  have independent significance,it is black who decides whether  to enter it or go for the alapin.In that sense,it has already lost a lot of its "venom".As for the Morra being played at the highest levels,no,top players apparently believe that a sraightforward Nf3 sicilian offers more.

On the contrary I consider the Smith-Morra to be more suitable for advanced players and not so much for beginners.

It's an openings that a lot of people try and then give up on. There are two things that make it challenging to play, one is that's it's extremely theoretical, by far the most theoretical anti-Sicilian since you have to known the Alapin (two anti-sicilians for the price of one), you have to know all the others ways to decline like the d3 systems (both fianchetto and hedgehog variations), declining with e5, etc. Then when it comes to the gambit accepted you must know about 15 specific systems that Black can adopt, some of which like the Taylor and Finegold defenses have entire books written about them.

The Black player needs only know one of these systems (which will act as a detailed roadmap showing them how to consolidate the pawn and win the game) meanwhile White must know all of them, and must know all of them better than the Black players (who are just using one system in all of their games so good luck with that) So it's very theoretical for White and if you're not willing to spend the time memorizing a bunch of theory then you'll never be successful with it. You might as well play the open Sicilian rather than learn all you need to know for the Morra, in fact, the open sicilian may be easier because then you can just use an English/Yugoslav attack set-up in all your games.

The second reason it's challenging is that you need to know and understand how to use advantages other than material. This is not something beginners are too good at. Not even so much initaive but things like space advantages, marginal advantages in the endgame, etc. In a normal situation with even material if one side has a small advantage and doesn't understand it, it's not really a big deal, but if you're down a pawn but you're actually slightly better, you really need to know why you're better and how to make use of it.

Well, for one thing, I play neither the Smith-Morra nor the Alapin, but isn't the most dangerous Alapin plan considered to be delaying d2-d4 and instead developing rapidly?

i decline this gambit )

Boy, we have the same conversation about the Morra every couple months. And every time someone quotes the Larsen bon mot.

Which is clever but I suspect is more the case of a 2300 player going up against 2500 and 2600 players with some homebrew 1.0 analysis. I give Ken Smith full marks for playing with the courage of his convictions.

Fast forward to today and we have Marc Esserman taking on grandmasters and we have GM Loek Van Wely, whose rating has placed him in the top ten, writing:

When Marc ventured 1.e4 c5 2.d4, I thought, "Is he serious? Are we going to play coffeehouse today?" Now I know the answer and the answer is yes! I got crushed in an impressive way....

It's time to put the Larsen sneer to rest.

The Smith Morra gambit has one of the highest win rates for white at below Master level. 

Dolphin makes a good case but I don't think he's talking about beginners playing the Morra, more like 2000+ players.

How many Sicilian class players really have a worked-out response to the Morra which is fresh in their minds when they play?

The basic Morra plan is simple with several textbook sacs that are quite effective. I'd expect the Morra to work pretty well against class players who haven't done their homework.

In Esserman's hands the Smith-Morra is a dangerous weapon,  but how many hours do you think Esserman has spent in his entire life analyzing the Smith-Morra gambit? Considering he's been playing the Morra since he was a kid, I'd say hundreds, if not thousands of hours. This is the kind of work it takes to become successful with the Morra.

Also, I believe Van Wely wrote that after his loss he and Esserman had a series of thematic blitz games in the Morra to test Esserman's ideas. I assume he didn't repeat his win over Van Wely in any of these games or else we'd have heard about it. This says nothing bad about the opening though considering the rating difference.

If you like to analyze opening variations the Smith-Morra is for you. Otherwise you may decide like I did that the juice isn't worth the squeeze. It's just a very challenging opening to play as White considering the multitude of Black responses. I switched to the Grand Prix attack and I find it so much easier to play, probably my rating instantly went up 50 points when I switched. Though I may continue to wheel the Smith-Morra out once and awhile if feel like a challenge.

Dolphin: You make a good bang-for-the-buck case against the Smith-Morra. I've looked at Esserman's book and it looks like a lot of work if one is up against Black players booked on the gambit.

I've had success with the Morra in five-minute and found it pretty devastating against those unprepared, which I suspect includes quite a lot of class players.

I was often able to get my pawn back in my Smith-Morra games, but it was usually the d-pawn, then we were left with a symmetrical pawn structure and some kind of equal endgame position.

You know it's funny, I also play the Danish Gambit and I find it a lot easier to play than the Smith-Morra, despite the fact the Danish is supposed to be even more unsound. I have a much easier and funner time in the Danish, whereas in the Smith-Morra I was often feeling frustrated. I attribute this to three things, one is that Black is left with an extra central pawn in the Morra, with which he can shield f7 from the raking light squired bishop. Two, there have not been so many detailed systems of how to accept the Danish Gambit and win as there are systems to accept the Morra and win. Pretty much there's only Pfren's blog post which is kind of buried under a bushel so to speak. Three, and this is a big one, I think it's the familiarity. Part of the idea of gambits is to surprise your opponent, when I play the Danish I can often sense my opponents are genuinely surprised and uncomfortable. When I play the Smith-Morra I don't sense surprise, I sense instead that they're thinking "oh ho hum, the Smith-Morra again, time to bust out the Taylor defense (or insert one of the 20 other systems here) like we always do."