My anger be-WARE!

Lately i get white pieces i play dumb and lose, so i challenge for a rematch, and to punish myself I play 1... a5 I didnt even know what it was called i had to look it up. It's called the Ware defense, and the same guys i just lost to I pwn with this. I havent got any lines memorized, i dont know any theory, i havent studied any games, I dont know if it is psychological or what but it almost makes the win worth the loss when my opening move says "I can play any garbage and beat you, you got lucky last game". I am 4 for 4 this month with this ridiculous defense against players rated 1407-1523

Why do you think it is working?

People are used to 'normal' openings with a very quick battle over the central squares. Stuff like this delays that and leaves people guessing. They might set up for you playing e5 eventually and when you go for d5 instead they'll have misplaced pieces.

It's psychological as well, like a boxer dropping his hands low and taunting you. some people get angry and want to mate you immediatly, thus overextending themselves.

Not that I recommend playing 1..a5, 2...b6, 3...Ba6 objectively though, it's creating weak light squares and then exchaning the bishop defending those.

The Ware defense just took down 2 more victims rated 1536 and 1477, these are all 10 minute blitz games, of course they blundered some but so did i, im not saying its good, it is obviously bad, but I am saying it must by lucky! 6-0 it is still undefeted in August

You see thats just it and that is what makes this experiment interesting. If my rating reflects my playing strength and i am just as likely (or more likely) to win playing openings that are garbage than if i do my best from move one. Than my strength as a player must lie in getting my opponents off book and into no man's land ASAP. Or perhaps the lesson is garbage openings can lull your opponent into being foolishly over confident. Or perhaps center control isnt as easy an advantage to convert at the 1500 level. Or maybe due to my opening they think im an idiot fresh off the checker board so they go for shallow tactics and obvious mate threats and then get themselves into bad positions, i dont know what it is but it is obviously more fun to break all the rules and win then follow all the rules and lose

It could also be a sign that you don't know your openings very well. I don't mean that as an offense btw, I'm going by my own experience.

I'm very lazy, when I play against the sicilian I look for shorcuts because I don't want to study the dragon, the najdorf, the sveshnikov, the kan, the scheveningen and anything else. There's a lot of theory on all those things, so I look at things like the closed sicilian or the grand prix.

It's good for getting results now, but I think I'd be a much better player if I were to play the open sicilian to understand those positions, losing a couple of games in the progress.

That being said, you'll often hear people say stuff like 'ah you can't play this at lvl x', underestimating weird stuff like this. Miles beat Karpov in a very famous game with 1...a6 and 2...b5.

Or look up 1.e4, e5 2. Qh5 in a database for instance, plenty of titled players played that.

At some point you lose the psychological effect though. If you're a 1200 playing this, people will think you're really bad. If you're like 2000 and play 1...a5, your opponents will take it seriously, because you're obviously no scrub.

The really good players who play something like this have it as a surprise weapon though, you don't see top players who always play this. A player like Morozevich finds new ideas in lines that were previously refuted, scores 1 or 2 wins and then moves on to the next weird line.

well... again that is the point. I dont "know" this opening and i am 6-0 Im not saying its good, im not saying opening theory isnt important but what i am saying is if you are rated under 1800 both sides are going to make some mistakes in the course of a game, and what i am finding out is if i get my opponent out of what they are used to i've got better winning chances than whatever advantage or equalization i would normally get out of a conventional opening. I have actually spent a fair amount of time studying openings, and know the book moves of most of them at least up to move 8. And i can play them and get good games sometimes winning sometimes losing, but ive never gone 6-0 in a month with black with my normal French, Nimsovitch, or Petrov I could always "know" these better with good results but it is intresting that with this experiment i've proven (at least to myself) that at my level it isnt as important as i previously thought I could just aim to get my opponent of book ASAP with good results. I think im going to start a new repotoire with this idea immediately.

But this opening is an aggressive hypermodern opening and your opponents disobyed opening principles aswell. That´s it. And when against edfisher, well who blunders that hard? He totally ignored your obvious attack.

1...a5 is complete and utter garbage!

If you want to be any good at chess, learn a real opening.  There's plenty of them out there.  For instance, against 1.e4, you have 1...e5, Sicilian, French, Caro-Kann (my preference), Pirc, Modern, etc.

If all you want to be is a woodpusher and enjoy shinanigans more than actually getting good at the game, by all means go ahead and play 1...a5.

but guys i know plenty of real openings, that is what is interesting. and i dont win 6 in a row with black ever with any of them so what is it about this defense that is working? It is obvious garbage so it must be lucky! 

and i am just one monkey with one typewriter writing the 1st 6 chapters well enough.

Don't entirely agree with this, I don't think it's all random.

I think it works partly because it's hypermodern -although a bad version obviously-, which is not something you see and know how to play against in a low level.

The other part is the psychology, opponents will think this is so bad that it must lose immediatly and might overextend to try to punish it.

When you would play a fellow IM and he plays 1...a5, you're probably happy because you know you'll have a comfortable edge and you'll try to exploit the weakness on b5 later on.

When some weaker player encounters this he might think 'lol this guy is horrible, let's mate him ASAP'

the ware defense lost like 4x tonight all against the same guy, but they were good games and he was just better than me... nothing proven, but 1.a4 won for white so... thats something... it really doesnt matter chess is cool like that, the better player wins no mater what the 1st move is, if i were a titled player Id play garbage all the time at the local club and it'd be a blast

I've seen your anger before but it was nothing to beware (only embarrassing for you.)

ha! wow getting trolled by that guy, is an acomplishment, if i remember right I challenged you and you chickened out so rather than "learningthemoves" grow some balls

You didn't challenge me and I've never backed down from anyone or anything. Your mother and your girl can verify my balls are fully grown already since you're so curious. And no, you didn't accomplish anything except the feat of making yourself look even stupider than you did already when you thought you "remembered right" and didn't.

There are over 700,000 words in the bible, which is approximately... 5 million characters? About a 1/30 chance of getting each character correct (assuming you include punctuation in addition to the letters of the alphabet). That's about a 1/(30^5,000,000) chance of getting it right each time...so it would probably take closer to 10^10,000,000 years or so...

But regardless of how low your approximation was, you raise a good point. There is absolutely no advantage to defending with 1... a5. It's just a normal winning streak bound to happen occassionaly to anyone who plays often enough.