Openings that nobody like

What are the openings in Chess that many people hate?

London system as white. I will play it only if my opponent is higher elo than me.

That is a loaded question and really unanswerable.

IMMATURE chess players will tell you things like "Anti-Sicilians because I can't play my dragon" or "The London, Exchange French, and Exchange Slav because they are SO BORING!" or other such BS. Ignore those people. They have no clue what they are doing.

Then you have the truly more serious player who is not a GM, like myself, that takes all EMOTION out of the equation, and bases it on true understanding of chess. In the French, my favorite line to face was the EXCHANGE because Black's life is EASY! Why do I not play the Sicilian? It isn't the benign Anti-Sicilians. It is the Open Sicilian. That is why I don't play 1...c5. There needs to be a logical basis for why you hate an opening. Boring is not logical. For example, I took a 13 month course in 2017. Month 2 was on pawn centers. Closed, Mobile, Static, Open, and Dynamic. Closed means multiple files blocked in the center. French, Classical Kings Indian (two openings I played then as Black), Czech Benoni, etc. Mobile means one side has a movable, big cental pawn mass and the other must chip away and prove over extension. Almost every game provided was either a Grunfeld or Alekhine. Static Center means one closed file with pawn breaks, like Exchange QGD. Open indicate at least one fully open file - Exchange French, Petroff, etc. Dynamic is everything else. Amorphous-like centers, like the Najdorf. So this is where you need to start looking at what positions you UNDERSTAND, not what you find Boring. Sure, the London can be boring sometimes, but do you understand the Static center? If you do, you should have no sweat drawing or winning the game. Here is how I assess my skills in the 5 types of pawn center:

Closed - Strong

Mobile - Very Weak

Static - Strong

Open - Strong

Dynamic - Eh, ok. Not great, but better than Mobile

And think about it, what openings have I played regularly over the board in the last 10 years, particularly as Black?

French, Petroff, Kings Indian, Stonewall Dutch, Classical Dutch.

French tends to be Closed (Advance, Winawer), Static (Closed Tarrasch) or Open (Open Tarrasch, Exchange)

Petroff - Open

Kings Indian - Closed (all Classical lines) or Dynamic (Saemisch, Four Pawns, etc)

Stonewall Dutch - Static

Classical Dutch - typically Static after ...e5 by Black and e4 by White.

Well, in 2021, I switched from the Kings Indian to the e6-Dutch lines.

So now I play the Petroff, French, and Dutch, based on my strengths of Closed, Open, and Static positions.

SO WHAT OPENINGS DO I HATE?

Grunfeld and Alekhine! And the reasoning behind it is explained above! I am so bad at those positions that when I have the mobile center, it crumbles. When I face it, I get rolled over by it.

So when asking about openings people don't like, it really is a loaded question, and the legitimacy of the response depends on the reasoning behind it. A mature French player loves the exchange as Black's life is easy while a "French Fake" will whine about the Exchange Variation.

So again, for me, it's the Grunfeld and Alekhine I hate, and for good reason, and I avoid both with both colors. Black I play Petroff, French, and Dutch. White, 1.d4 and if 1...Nf6, Trompowsky. No Grunfeld!

Nobody likes chaotic openings like the Latvian Gambit, the Englund Gambit, the Halloween Gambit, Morra gambit, etc.

When I first joined a chess club and had no idea about openings, I was already hearing very dismissive comments about openings like the Elephant Gambit or the Latvian Gambit.

openings that go against the established principles of chess.

Nobody likes them because the vast majority of NPCs, of normies, already have built-in prejudices, also thanks to the influence of many grandmasters like the legendary Bobby Fischer, who have talked trash about these openings without ever having studied them in their lives

because they consider them a waste of time (which is somewhat true, since in classical games playing theoretically “bad” openings is usually a terrible decision , in slow chess, hyper-aggressive play gets punished quite heavily in the long run.)

To me, those GMs are ignorant, and I’ve beaten more than one (in blitz games) because of their own ignorance and big mouths.

But in fast time controls

blitz, bullet, etc.

there’s nothing more effective to throw your opponent off than playing one of these “bad” gambits I mentioned. Even 1.Nf3 g5!? can do the trick.

It’s like saying: "Alright, we both know this opening is refuted… now prove it."

And what happens most of the time? That the typical know-it-all master has absolutely no clue how to refute it.

Maybe he remembers the line that John Nunn recommends to refute the Latvian Gambit

but what he doesn’t know is that Black has studied that line deeper than him, and that’s why, in practice, Black is going to get the upper hand, even if he’s down a pawn.

Whoop-di-bleeping-doo-dah, you beat them in blitz - a.k.a. fake chess. Let's see you beat a GM with that garbage in over the board play with classic time controls!

In fact, my biggest win comes against someone trying to play Trash. I was on the Black side of Larsen's Opening against an IM (Alexander Matros) and I knew the theory deeper than he did. 1.b3 e5 2.Bb2 Nc6 3.e3 d5 4.Bb5 Bd6 5.f4 Qh4+ 6.g3 Qe7 7.Nf3 f6 8.fxe5 fxr5 9.Bxc6+ bxc6 10.Nxe5 Nf6 and here he played 11.Nd3?! Rather than 11.Nxc6. I (Black) won in 60 moves.

I no longer play classical chess anymore, and if I ever returned to it, I wouldn't play gambits like these for the reasons I’ve already mentioned

The approach in a classical game has to be different more solid.

It makes no sense to start with the handicap of being a pawn or a knight down.

It’s not that I’m worried my opponent will have memorized the theory and play all the best moves

what concerns me in a slow game is that I’d be forced to play all the best moves myself, because the Latvian Gambit is like walking a razor’s edge

any small inaccuracy from Black and you're lost.

I only remember playing the Latvian Gambit in a classical time control once, against a master back in 2015.

I lost the game in just 20-25 moves because I made a serious mistake

But to be fair, the master misplayed the line and I actually got a good position out of the opening. Unfortunately, I messed up pretty badly in the middlegame.

Still, I relate it to the fact that I was sick at the time, and the night before that game I had been vomiting and wasn’t even sure if I was going to show up. The master played this line against me and I equalized easily, even though he beat me 10 moves later.

We can see you're high rated in bullet, but a) bullet performance isn't the standard by which we assess openings, many things can work in bullet, this doesn't distinguish things much. Rapid performance would be a much better format to go by; b) you're not 2600 because of the opening - you could change to other openings, and drill them for a while, and wind up in roughly the same rating range. Opening choice may account for... 100 points variance in elo at most.
Which means these anecdotes about "well I beat a GM once in the Smith Morra" are irrelevant.

I find your claim that Bobby Fischer never studied the Smith Morra extremely dubious. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the game, he spent his entire life on chess... I see no reason to assume he'd never studied the lines. There's no evidence for it, in any case.

Anyway, I don't reject the Smith Morra because I haven't studied it, I reject it because I have studied it, and it sucks. It is the easiest line I have to face in the sicilian.

It doesn't suck just due to the relatively useless pawn sac. It actually isn't surprising, or rare, or novel. Like at all. 
You've gone to great lengths to congratulate yourself for thinking outside of the box... (despite the fact you actually just play 1. e4). The Smith Morra is not outside of the box. It is more like a pre-packaged, prescribed way to "be outside the box". It's like... middle-schoolers wearing Vans to be edgy, it's in the box. I probably run into the line once a day when I play bullet.

The same generally applies to the Englund gambit. I saw that 3 times yesterday. It's not novel.

Chess has changed alot in just the last couple years. In bullet the Englund is now played in 6% of games. It was 3% just 8 years ago. People are, as a matter of principle, being told to play in "novel" ways now. And predictably many gravitate toward the known, approved ways of being novel.

Novel / creative would be something I rarely if ever see, which makes me think "oh that's new and interesting!".

Sucks doesn't mean you can't win with an opening, it means statistically you're less likely, and that it is poor compared to the alternatives.

Of course I've studied other openings for months, like the Caro-Kann, the Scandinavian, or the Modern Defense, and in fast games I always come back to the same conclusion: they simply don't give me as good results as the Latvian Gambit. Why? For many reasons

the main one is that White is usually well-prepared against the Caro-Kann, the Modern, the Scandinavian, the French, and plays them very frequently (this is the key)

The same happens with the Morra: Sicilian players don’t face it that often over the board, and even if they have the lines memorized, it won’t help much if they don’t actually practice it. Practice is just as important as theory.

As I said, White players are rarely prepared to face the Latvian Gambit, and even if they are, they don’t have nearly the same practical experience with the opening as I do playing it with Black. Also, the move f5 is extremely powerful in practice against humans because White’s knight is on f3 which is not the case, for example, in the King’s Gambit, where the Black knight is still on g8. That’s why the King’s Gambit isn’t as effective for White in practical play.

I’m telling you this as someone who has studied the King’s Gambit deeply too, but I’ve never had the kind of success with it that I’ve had with the Latvian.

In the King’s Gambit, Black has several critical lines where they equalize without too much trouble in practice.

About the Morra

one reason I no longer play the classical Morra with c3 is the problem of declined lines.

For example, when Black plays Nf6 (an Alapin-type setup), it's just boring.

I used to play that sideline with Qxd4, but it’s still dull same goes for the d3 line… just boring.

I’m not concerned with what the engine says

we’re human, and in fast games the psychological factor is what really matters.

The slower the game, the less important that factor becomes.

Anyway, I’ve evolved as a chess player, and I don’t play the Morra anymore because I’ve realized it’s stronger to play the same idea without giving up the pawn that is:

1.e4 c5 2.d4 cxd4 3.Qxd4!

This is much better and more effective in the long term .

There’s also way less to memorize than in the classical Morra, and the practical results are much better too.

I'm not arguing against the Latvian, I actually do find that sharp and surprising. It's your claim that the Sicilian player rarely sees the Smith Morra that I am contending with. This claim is simply not correct. In bullet, at 2200+ level, the Smith Morra is played in 12% of games on lichess. That is 1 in 8 games... sicilian players are practiced in this line. It's actually one of the easiest lines to drill, because it's so compact... white doesn't have alot of options because he's on a timer. But at this point, the Smith Morra is the "prepackaged, approved" way of being novel, and so it just isn't. For context, whatever open sicilian black plays isn't just 1 line, it's like 15 lines, with plenty of deviations. That's where novelties lie - deeper into the sicilian.
But even if I wanted an anti-sicilian, I'd probably play b3, or Qxd4, or maybe b4 in some lines - those lines are alot more interesting. 
At my level it's even worse, I see anti-sicilians far more than I see the mainline sicilians.

I agree with your assessment that sidelines perform better, that's why I've played the Van Geet, 1. d4 > 2. Nd2, the Veresov as white. If that's your approach though, why do you play 1. e4? I played 1. e4 for a while, but I gave it up because resistance was just always staunch - the opponents are well prepared there no matter what you do.

Yes, I agree with you

in the Morra, White has to be very well prepared and review the lines from time to time to not forget them, especially the critical lines that Black has.

So I agree with you in practice, it's better to play b3 or b4, or the line I currently play with Qxd4. They're also easier to study than the Morra.

Regarding 2.b3, I've also played the Snyder variation recently and I like it quite a lot

in fact, as of today, it would be my first choice in a classical time control game.

My opinion on your Qxd4 move, which I think we've debated before, is that it's just better after waiting for white to commit to d6 or e6. But against Nc6 I'd probably play b3 or b4. Probably I'd prefer b3. You could also play a delayed Smith Morra (of course I would never do that). Anyway, it's not entirely transparent to argue in favor of the Smith morra when you're deviating from it on move 3. You're not playing the Smith Morra that 95% of players play. This Qxd4 line should probably be given another name. There's also the Morphy Gambit which I think is fine and I even transpose into it from the Old Benoni sometimes. I do think Qxd4 is an improvement, but it's hard not to improve on the Smith Morra's main line.

I like all the normal openings but I tend to struggle against highly theoretical dubious openings that the super-confident-in-their-middle-game players tend to play...

1. vs. Elephant Gambit

2. vs. Latvian Gambit

3. vs. Alekhine

4. vs. Scotch Gambit, Canal Variation (Double Scotch Accepted as Black)

5 . vs. King's Gambit as Black

6. vs. Goering Gambit as Black

7. ...vs Nimzowitch is the worst if they know theory