Smash Your Opponents with The Larsen's Opening. (Topic: Larsen's Opening)

The Larsen's Opening, 1.b3, is a strong opening.  Look at the games below:

One of the main sequences for black, at least a few years ago, was this

A safe easy way of playing against it if you know no theory is just a reversed london e.g.

5.h3! Followed by d3, g4, and attack!. White woukd just castle on the Qside.

I am referring to the Reversed London Line.

#NotSoSafe

3 pawn moves in the opening to attack the king that isn't castled there yet. Somehow I'm not worried

I tend to think the opposite. All positions are pretty safe, unless both players agree to take at least some risks.

Sure positions can explode, and they might require a lot of calculation and knowledge to refute... but refute means it was objectively losing in the first place

For 1 b3 Nf6, Jobava doesnt play 3 Nc3, but 3 c4 double financetto....which is no longer 'Larsen'....but a weak Bg2 opening.

As far as "analysis" goes, the internet is filled with pretenders with low strategy scores. Like if you dont play bullet style you are now a clown....or is this Lyudmil's secret chess? Who knows and who cares.

I am nowhere near pfren's skill, but he has voiced precisly what i think. I used to use Larsen a bit, and quicly gave up.

Larsen's attack is probably objectivly sound, Stil,l it requires a lot of skill and precision. 

I can't help feeling, that in a clash of classical pawn center and hipermodern fainchettoed bishops, the pawn center has almost always the upper hand. At least that how it looks like near the bottom  of chess skill ladder. Pawn center is intuitive and easy to operate decenty, while controling the centre from a far seem to reqiure quite a lot of skill and understanding.

Larsen's Opening is TOTAL GARBAGE!  White gets equality at best!  There is one line where White does get a draw pretty much by force, but it's the White King hanging by a thread, not the Black one.  Otherwise, in pretty much any other line, Black's better.

The highest rated player I've ever beaten over the board was a result of him getting punished for playing this stupid opening (and playing a dubious 11th move instead of the draw line with 11.Nxc6 and then a blunder on move 12)!

Nice game.

I remember a guy showing me this pawn "sac" line and that it was supposedly better for black, but still complicated so I didn't want to use it, but you didn't back down against your much higher rated opponent.

i play the larsen often. personally the lines with e5 where my favorite as white gets a very nice  unbalanced game with good chances if you want to play for the win. the lines that i really hated to face where fellow fianchetto defenses as the games got too balanced very quickly and those where black plays boring and safe like 1.d5 2.e6 3.nf6 4.be7 0-0.

its a perfect first move, for freestyling and getting a good game with little theory.

some people here are recommending the london system formation as black  and i used to hate fighting thatbut white actually gets a very nice game after

and now white will play for e4 0-0-0 and h3-g4. not the passive game black wanted!

thrillerfan. as always your opinions must be taken with a grain of salt, i have never seen such a bad larsen player with such a high rating. those lines are pretty darn easy to play as white, (so much so that these lines are actually completely playable one tempi down as black!). everyone who plays this stuff knows about the poison pawn in those lines. you are supposed to play nc3 and white keeps first move advantage (not to mention the unbalanced game he wants!)

Don't some people use it as a blitz weapon?

But for long games I don't understand the appeal.

1. b3 is perfectly fine as long as you're not looking for an advantage right out of the opening. It's an easy way to get a playable middlegame without studying much theory. Larsen initially had a lot of success with the opening but did lose to Spassky in something like 17 moves once as well as a couple of other games that he lost convincingly. Fischer dabbled with it, playing it around 5 or 6 times if I remember correctly. He won every game he played with it.

Ok, I'm going to post twice because I don't want this cool game to be left on the first page

I guess we could call it a famous game... it's really nice in any case.

moves 12, 13, and 14 by Spassky! I wonder if he'd already seen the idea when he played 10...Ng4

For black, yes

For white, I think you'll have to know a few things. Yes on move 10 you shouldn't be lost, but let's say the middlegame at move 20... black can choose many different structures and piece arrangements. If white knows nothing I imagine he will have bad results.

Do you mean Nc6?  11.Nc3 drops a piece.

11.Nxc6 is the line where White barely can hold on to equality after 11...Qe4 12.O-O and then if memory serves me right, since I am now on my cell and not looking at a board, I believe it is 12...Bh6 13.Rf2 Ng4 14.Rf3, or something like that.  Nobody since this game has played the pawn grab line against me.  I think I only faced 1.b3 over the board once since and I seem to recall that player playing 5.c4 instead of 5.f4.

Oh, and that grain of salt is larger than your brain!  I am 100 percent certain that this line is at best equal for White.  AT BEST!

8 Nc3

not needing to study with 1.b3 is a little bit of an exaggeration. agaisnt the more testing lines with black, white should know his theory at least 10 moves deep. But it shoudnt demand as much know-how as the main lines.

That was pretty cool.  Was there a group of people watching your game near the end?