My e4-e5 Opening: The Obscure Glek

GM Glek has written two articles in NIC on this opening. Black's soundest reply is 4...d5 5.exd5 Nxd5 6.Bg2 Nxc3 7.bxc3 Bd6.

   It's unbelievable how many nonsense can say a guy that claims he , his family and his dog have high IQ.

    Man seriously ,where did you learn chess? I need to know your mentor and congratulate him for the amazing job he did to educate you.

     The "stupidly named" opening is named after Igor Glek the GM  that first regularly used it in high level. Who is the stupid now?>>

Strongly looks like you but after all, this was a year ago. You seemed to have improved of late. The Frankenstein-Dracula was named after two people. Does that make it worse?

If white wants the queens off and a simple game, white can play Qxe5+. If white wants the queens on, he presumably wants a more complex game. Therefore, he can learn the main line, which also begins with Qh5. I played it loads of times and it gives white an interesting game with many aggressive possibilities.

All this thread proves so far is that high playing strength at chess doesn't always correlate very positively with logical ability or an ability to enter into discussions convincingly. Probably why some people hide from the world in chess?

I really thought a certain titled player had stopped being a -----. I think only a pair of creeps who want to impress similarly weak minded people would start the insults again after ... let's see, 13 months? That seems pathetic to me, at least. Maybe also to others, who knows.

In my opinion, if white wishes to play systems with g3, he should do so on move 3 with the Konstantinopolsky (i.e. 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.g3). In that case, white reserves the possibility of placing the knight on d2, depending on which system black chooses.>>

Yes, that's also true.  Of course, one way of playing the Vienna is to see if black mirrors white's moves, such as with 2. Nc6 and maybe even 3. Bc4 ...Bc5, which gives white an advantage. If 1. e4 ...e5 2. Nc3 ...Nf6, white might choose 3. g3.

Frankenstein- Dracula is not a good opeing choice for most people at OTB play, because

1. Black gets plenty of positional compensation for the exchange in the main line,

2. Black can kill all the fun (if he wishes) with 5...Be7, when white does not have anything to boast about.>>>

As Pfren says, I can remember struggling as white to win against lines where black plays for a draw. I used to do alright as white against booked-up players in the complex lines but white has to play very accurately. I usually used to make the exchange count. I probably still have some of my old game scores from the early 1990s.

I also played the Moeller Attack and the Max Lange. In practice I did better in the Max Lange than the Moeller. I tried to learn openings a couple of plies at a time, to gradually get the feel of them and I used to work out ways to bale out if I wasn't comfortable. Sometimes in the Moeller, I knew white was winning but couldn't see how to do it in a 90 minute league match. I think the reason was that in the Max Lange, the positional concepts may be easier for me to understand and the weird pawn formations were to my taste whereas black only had to deviate from one of the mainlines I knew in the Moeller and I wasn't good enough/didn't have the knowledge to win. And of course, people avoid the Max Lange because they think they might get a Fried Liver thing, although I think that 3. ...Nf6 in the Italian is probably slightly better for black than 3. ...Bc5. It challenges white to enter complex lines where in theory black is about equal.

In the end I decided that it was all too much to keep up with theory and so I switched away from 1. e4 after experimenting briefly with 1. e4 g3 systems. If I was going to end up playing the Ruy Lopez, I reasoned that I should specialise in something equally positional like 1. c4. Eventually I switched away from 1. c4, via 1. Nf3 for a season, to 1. d4, because wins as white after 1. c4 were taking 50 or 60 moves and draining my energy in tournaments. 1. d4 was better because there was a much higher proportion of wins in under 30 moves.