The Sniper is an Opening I want to Learn

if not that familiar with the sniper.

if i play like this as white how would the sniper go? 

3...c5 - The Sniper is basically 1...g6, 2...Bg7, and 3...c5, against ANYTHING!

<IM Pfren> 

The game you posted does show a stronger player slowly and carefully outplaying one not that strong. It didn't seem to refute the opening as such. 

The rating difference between the players was 200 points - and it showed. 

Black looked active and seemed to dictate the tone of the game - until white proved that the little pawn on a2 was not so modest after all - tipping the scale decisively in his favor. 

It's obvious that prior to that point the game could have gone a million different ways. Basically the idea of giving a pawn (and the DSB for a knight) and then tripling the pawns on the c-file and pressuring them doesn't seem so absurd. 

My abilities of analysing opening play certainly don't approach yours - but this is the way it looks to a reasonably strong amateur here. 

but that transposes to a mainline kings indian defence. is there a point to play the sniper if you in addition is forced to learn the mainline kings indian? sounds unpractical to me i would rather just learn the kings indian defence

Where's that game?

Thanks. I think I'll probably remain stuck in the Ruy López.

<IM Pfren> Thanks for the explanation, and for pointing out the exact nature of the game and of the ratings. This does make a difference, of course. 

I remember creating such a tripled (and extra) pawn in my own position in a French defense I played last year against an opponent rated 100 points higher (around FIDE 2070). That was a brilliant win indeed - the tripled pawn was used to completely cripple his position...

By the way - he finished the tournament first, with 6 out of 7 and a 2200+ performance - and in our club he's quite the expert for the French defense, in which I clubbed him. 

Unfortunately I no longer have that game (my hard disc crashed in December and lots of stuff were lost), and I also didn't post it on chess.com, so I can't post it here. The structure resulted from a Winawer with ...Bxc3 and later dxc5 by white. He suffered for the whole game after that. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

I don't know if I liked black's position, say, around move 15 or 20 in the game in #32. I just say that to my eyes it wasn't quite that clear-cut

In the Winawer, there's an exception to the rule that doubled and even tripled pawns are positioally bad, but that is due to the unique situation there. Even so, as Kasparov once said after his match with Short where Short routinely voluntarily messed up his own pawns, structure still matters.

There are also players who claim that there are in fact no openings. Just middle-game positions with distinctive pawn-structures. Personally I am inclined to agree with them to the degree that a productive study of the opening starts with a thorough understanding of the kinds of positions that arise after the mundane opening-moves have been played out. In fact I believe this is critical: if you don't know where to go after your preparation, you may find yourself lost in a quagmire of positional features and don't know how to deal with them.

King's Indian, Grunfeld-Indian, Benoni, Benko, Philidor, Pirc, Sicilian ((Hyper-)Accelerated) Dragon, Maroczy-Bind, some lines of the Closed Sicilian/Grand Prix, Panov-Botwinnik (yip, basically anything with a bishop on g7 and Black attacking the d4-square with c7-c5) can be reached through the Sniper-setup. This means a few things:

- By using the Sniper's move-order, you can put the question to White's preparation, and you have a few neat little tricks up your sleeve to crash the uninformed and inattentive White-players out from the start;
- The Sniper is not a "whole new opening", as you might be inclined to think at first hand. It's a way to transpose into these other openings, meaning you'd have to study the typical middle-game positions anyway. You just have a less-known quagmire of deceitful variations at your own disposal as well.

For studying any opening, I suggest to first set up the tabias of these openings and then remove all the pieces from the board in order to imprint the position's fundaments in your head. You get a much clearer idea of the fundamental central pawn-levers and breakthrough opportunities for both sides, and you can also see much clearer where you eventually want to have your pieces.
Only then you go back to the opening-lines to see how to get there, and along the way you learn all the tricks and pitfalls of the opening. And you'll understand the different development-moves much better. (Why would White put the king's knight on e2 in most variations of the Frensch Tarrasch and not on its more natural square f3? Because, apart from the fact that Ne2-f4 can be annoying for Black, very often the knights are supposed to be on f3 and e2 to fortify the d-pawn, not on f3 and d2. The knight on d2 is supposed to go to f3.)

<SmyslovFan> I suppose that that exception is because the black position is pretty cramped, and especially that c5 pawn is instrumental (in many variations) in keeping the b7 pawn back, so that you generate pressure along the b-file. 

This always requires calculation, to make sure that black doesn't suddenly break free and blow the position wild open. That game that I no longer have a record of, was a great example of what I'm writing here. 

I have not yet begun to study openings in depth (I don't think I am ready, yet), but I have made myself familiar with a good number of them. And I have never heard of "The Sniper" opening. And quite honestly, it sounds like something I would more likely hear from local "chess hustlers" playing blitz than from the more serious, higher level players.

There was some statistics done, and in terms of ratings being good predictors of OTB strength, the best predictor was blitz, the second best was bullet, and the worst was correspondence chess. I don't have the link at my fingertips, but you could look it up somewhere on this site. 

Since most of us are not serious, higher level players, we are by no means qualified to criticize players who are. Also, even if the Sniper would actually be an inferior opening-system, it is by no means ridiculous to play it, especially if no actual refutation has been conceived. I have my doubts if any of you know the Dzindzi-Indian (also related to the Sniper setup), which I believe hasn't been played that often on 2800 level but never has been refuted either. Have a look:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/dzindzi-indian

If you think a system is inferior, don't play it. But don't criticize anyone who does play it. And if anyone so wishes to talk people down because of the openings they play, then send out a clear and thorough refutation. And who the hell cares what the names for something are - you're playing moves, positions, concepts, ideas, tactics, etc. They just have been given names for easy talking ;)

I did not intend to sound insulting or critical towards anyone who plays this opening (sniper). I was only commenting on the way it sounds; similar to the way the Monkey's Bum sounds. They both sound as if no credit is due them. Actually, "Sniper" is a better sounding name than "Monkey Butt" (American English).

SmyslovFan: "...predictors of OTB strength, the best predictor was blitz..."

If that is right, then I am worse at this game than I thought! Then again, I wonder if they considered a standard OTB game. I've played a 9 hour game before (OTB). And I am certainly better at a slow game than one with a fast time control. I would think that is true for most people.

Interesting stats.

I am not sure but you must not use violence if the possibility of peace is in the horizon at any possible parameter in the complete parametric space in spite of the fact that the manifold is an almost zero space in Rn. Catch my drift?

Is this is right

All we here know it as the sniper so that «better known» is not true

Why necro from two years ago?

the sniper is refuted, i posted them lines in some other forum yesterday. go check them out.