I used this opening a couple of time and I had my share of wins. I like also playing it with black, (Borg defense, also called Basman defense) 1- e4 - g5 2-d4 - Bg7. That's about the same lines. I often draw and even win a little with black...
How have you had your share of wins? Anyone familiar with this opening would crush you without trying. All black has to do is play c6 and your entire gambit is pointless.
Whenever I play white using the grob I struggle to compensate for the forseeable weakness on C2 and H4. I like playing it because it quickly exits well known book lines. I started a tourney
http://www.chess.com/tournament/grob5
For the Grob. I want to see how others respond to the weaknesses. I figured it would be a great learning experiance but not many have joined. I also bought Basman's Grob book but I don't think it address the long term weaknesses on those squares. Thoughts?
I don't play it because I don't have a plan in the Grob.
Because I credit my opponents with the good sense not to play 1. g4?! d5 2. Bg2 Bxg4 3. c4 c6 4. cxd5 cxd5 5. Qb3 e6?? 6. Qa4+.
It completely ignores all basis of chess opening theory, plus it destroys your king side pawn structure.
Read Silman much? Cripe. Calling this classic opening the Grob is akin to calling cannabis pot. The Kolibri Ninja Hummingbird or the Old Genoa or the Spike is an excellent opening (Forget that wuss Basman, too, 2. h3?? misses the entire spirit of the gambit.) for anyone under 2000. It does what the opening's supposed to do, create a difference around which you configure your army, not the other way around, folks.
I play this exclusively (black and white) and learned it in the park to hustlers who took my money. I learned it slowly in correspondence chess and it truly works when you figure out the lines. Tactics galore, hesitation on the opponents part who is seeing this usually for the first time (true novelty alert), most crucially, it puts the fun & fight back in 2 chess and does what the opening's supposed to do: creates a difference around which you build your army, not the other way around. Besides who the hell doesn't know 20 moves deep into the sicilian or Ruy, that's not chess, that's memorization. How unfun. This style is a fight and makes people think from move one; not to mention all of the traps in it lawdy lawd, you can win pieces in 5 moves, checkmates in under 10, and 1/7 games end by move 8 with a piece lost and a big fat resignation take my word for it if you are under 2000 you can learn tons playing this old Genoa style. Tartakower played it in simuls, and it is offbeat enough to send shivers down the spines of the booklearned. Eric
The grob is fine for beginners, and go for cheap tricks. What i dont like about it is that you fall in love with it, and you dont bother to learn/improve opening principles.
Basman's 2. h3 was creative in its own right. I would not call that a wuss move in the least, rather a strategic handling of 1. g4.
Basman's 2. h3 was creative in its own right. I would not call that a wuss move in the least, rather a strategic handling of 1. g4.
There's absolutely no "strategical element" to that approach. Black will happily play ...e5 and occupy the center, and then probe white's self-inflicted kingside liabilities with ...Ne7-g6. To that simple plan white can only react spasmodically.
6. Bf5? is not necessary. The pawn is pinned.
6. e5! gives black a decent position.
If regurgitating general chess principles was all it took to win positions and games Pfren everyone including you would be a Grandmaster. Every time I see a post where you dismiss an opening on the strength of 1 or 2 moves and the rehashing of often repeated chess principles I'm reminded of something that Short (Someone who actually is a grandmaster) wrote, approximately "The biggest fallacy in chess is the quasi-religious belief in the primacy of the opening”. Yes, chess openings are important for providing some sort of an advantage, if any, for the middle game and on into the endgames. But openings are only as good as the person using them and against who.
Take for example the following, a 7 day a move on line correspondence game I played. I came out worse in the opening but Black sadly underestimated the quality of his defence and made poor 15, 16 & 17th moves
From King's Gambit: A Son, A Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game" by Paul Hoffman.
Tom Plenty on the topic: [Basman] "was not a real Gobster because he wouldn't gambit the g-pawn, but quickly defended it with another pawn. He's a wimp -- no, I don't want to say that because I'd be insulting wimps. Defense is for women. It's the ladies' variation. Real men sac the g-pawn."
If regurgitating general chess principles was all it took to win positions and games Pfren everyone including you would be a Grandmaster. Every time I see a post where you dismiss an opening on the strength of 1 or 2 moves and the rehashing of often repeated chess principles I'm reminded of something that Short (Someone who actually is a grandmaster) wrote, approximately "The biggest fallacy in chess is the quasi-religious belief in the primacy of the opening”. Yes, chess openings are important for providing some sort of an advantage, if any, for the middle game and on into the endgames. But openings are only as good as the person using them and against who.
Take for example the following, a 7 day a move on line correspondence game I played. I came out worse in the opening but Black sadly underestimated the quality of his defence and made poor 15, 16 & 17th moves
Black blundered by castling right into your attack. Not sure that really recommends the Grob.
If regurgitating general chess principles was all it took to win positions and games Pfren everyone including you would be a Grandmaster. Every time I see a post where you dismiss an opening on the strength of 1 or 2 moves and the rehashing of often repeated chess principles I'm reminded of something that Short (Someone who actually is a grandmaster) wrote, approximately "The biggest fallacy in chess is the quasi-religious belief in the primacy of the opening”. Yes, chess openings are important for providing some sort of an advantage, if any, for the middle game and on into the endgames. But openings are only as good as the person using them and against who.
Take for example the following, a 7 day a move on line correspondence game I played. I came out worse in the opening but Black sadly underestimated the quality of his defence and made poor 15, 16 & 17th moves
Black blundered by castling right into your attack. Not sure that really recommends the Grob.
Did you actually read what I wrote? I was not trying to recommend the Grob. Not at all. I did say that Black blundered and you saying as such rather leads creedance to my point, It is not the opening but the person using it and against whom.
From King's Gambit, by Paul Hoffman,
"I was a diligent student then . . . I studied openings and endgames. I read books. I studied pawn structure and really tried to understand the game. Then I fell in with the wrong crowd. . . . Chess bums from the community at large. . . I played chain-smoking, pizza-eating, beer -swilling alcohlics, and these guys introduced me . . . into the hustler world of unsound openings. He discovered That he got the most pleasure in chess when he beat someone in 20 moves with a weird little trap that he was booked up on and his adversary wasn't."
"Plenty's introduction to hustling was a book called 200 Traps in Fianchetto Openings. "I remember being astounded that all these sweet traps were out there . . . The very last page of this book discussed the Grob. "I knew this was the Holy Grail, the magic bullet that was going to take me to the next level The Grob was full of really sleazy stuff. When Black responds logically, White just comes in and murders him. I've developed a taste for the quick kill. Life would not be as wonderful without the Grob."
If regurgitating general chess principles was all it took to win positions and games Pfren everyone including you would be a Grandmaster. Every time I see a post where you dismiss an opening on the strength of 1 or 2 moves and the rehashing of often repeated chess principles I'm reminded of something that Short (Someone who actually is a grandmaster) wrote, approximately "The biggest fallacy in chess is the quasi-religious belief in the primacy of the opening”. Yes, chess openings are important for providing some sort of an advantage, if any, for the middle game and on into the endgames. But openings are only as good as the person using them and against who.
Take for example the following, a 7 day a move on line correspondence game I played. I came out worse in the opening but Black sadly underestimated the quality of his defence and made poor 15, 16 & 17th moves
Black blundered by castling right into your attack. Not sure that really recommends the Grob.
Did you actually read what I wrote? I was not trying to recommend the Grob. Not at all. I did say that Black blundered and you saying as such rather leads creedance to my point, It is not the opening but the person using it and against whom.
Pardon me, I must have gotten confused when you seemed to be disagreeing with IM Pfren when your positions actually agree quite a bit without you realizing it?
Your argument starts to fall down at the GM level. There's no recovery from playing an opening that gives away white's advantage and offers easy equality (or worse). A GM will will latch onto that one opening weakness like a bulldog and never let go.
Show me where i directly disagree with him. In fact, I nether agree nor disgaree. What I do is take task with him constantly going into different threads and lambasting various openings simply based upon the regurgitation of dogmatic chess principles and very little else. It is neither contructive nor helpful. All it does is reaffirm the present dogma that a certain opening is bad. In the case of "Grob's Attack", if one was to accept such dogma without question I would never found out that rather than being total bad, it does have some interesting attacking options. However this is not to say I would ever play in a serious game, at least over the board. If people are happy to accept the dogma given by our so called titled betters then who am I to argue? However they are missing out on the wealth of discoveries they could be making for themselves.
As to your beleif that my statement falls over at GM level is a sweeping generalisation that presupposes that GM's are not human and are devoid of making mistakes. One example of the top of my head was the last World championships where Calsen had Anand by the balls as Black but let the advantage slip and Anand drew.
If regurgitating general chess principles was all it took to win positions and games Pfren everyone including you would be a Grandmaster. Every time I see a post where you dismiss an opening on the strength of 1 or 2 moves and the rehashing of often repeated chess principles I'm reminded of something that Short (Someone who actually is a grandmaster) wrote, approximately "The biggest fallacy in chess is the quasi-religious belief in the primacy of the opening”. Yes, chess openings are important for providing some sort of an advantage, if any, for the middle game and on into the endgames. But openings are only as good as the person using them and against who.
Take for example the following, a 7 day a move on line correspondence game I played. I came out worse in the opening but Black sadly underestimated the quality of his defence and made poor 15, 16 & 17th moves
If i knew my opponents were going to castle into an attack i would play it. But its not played often by good players for a reason.
Hey folks, less talking 'bout the Grob and more playing of it! It's fun; who gives a shite if it's unsound or not; it's only unsound when they can prove it is. I win with it 61% of the time, and I am terrible, but this style of play opens up the board and better yet the imagination. Such pretension regarding "correct" play; meh.
grob's attack is one of a number of dubious openings i use because i enjoy having to solve the difficulties they create.
white is not automatically lost unless he tries to win on the white squares with that gambit.
basman showed one way to play it positionally; i would like to see others (e.g. that 2.e3 variation). what is not automatically obvious about irregular openings is that, provided one has defensive knowledge & a bit of luck, even better players will not be able to overrun your weird set-up unless a blunder occurs; meanwhile, there are opportunities for the other player to misunderstand what's going on, due to lack of experience against nonstandard things...