The Top 5 Most Underrated Chess Openings!

UGH!!! effing android toy computer wouldn't let me escape the quote after i edited it. If BDG is unsound, how did the 2200 who put me on the path to playing the gedult via the scandinavian move order beat deep blue with it in a blitz game, and how do i have winning stats with it, CRUSHING stats with its mieses carokann cousin and the ONLY close to equal stats against the french with alapin diemer?

BDG has something like an 8% edge 1600-2000, and even Levy and Nakumura rank it as "unbeatable". There's more to effing life than a single pawn.

As a king's gambiteer, gedult BDG gives me my EXACT preferred tactical tools... knight on f3, bishop on c4 and a juicy semi-open f file that punishes positional players for their lack of tactical smarts. I know this because I BEAT the BDG as black by a few % too and it isn't because of booking up. It's because I'm more of a tactician than other tactical players. It's all I know and do.

I don't listen to elitist GMs or their amateur parrots. They are MOSTLY clueless about what happens outside their pawn pushing bubble in the REAL WORLD where tactics BEAT position.

Look at any LEGIT gambit, and you're likely to see a plus 8% stat 1600-2000 where NO ONE is consistently 95% accurate and its common for BOTH players to have 50% accuracy in a game.

Based on THAT stat, I'll concede that gambits win in the battle of inaccuracies which is another way to say they're MORE accurate in amateur games.

If they're as bad as haters say they are, yet having winning stats, then haters are worse

Alekhine doesn't bother me one bit. I just don't play into its knight chasing PLANS. I have winning stats with both a line I forgot AND returning to the krejcik. Wreck an alekhines castle on move 3, and it's on

I don't know if the nimzowitsch defense is underrated as it has slightly bad stats, but checking my games out this morning, I haven't seen it ONCE in about 2,000 games as white. It used to drive me nuts as a 1400

Who is playing the opening though? White or black? On what move is it that the opening is officially the Czech Pirc?

I personally like the colle-zukertort.not sure if its over or under rated but I haven't seen it played.

These are from my repertoire so I must believe in them -

1. Two Knights sicilian - I think it's the most complex transpositional sicilian setup in all of chess, which also happens to be almost never played... people have no idea what hit them in this opening. Perhaps it isn't played because the sicilian is an e4 defense and Reti players would rather stick with d4 openings. But for a Van Geet player it's a must play. I think in reality, even if you are stretching yourself thin, the opponent is alot more confused than you. A whole giant blog post could be dedicated to this opening, but in almost every line there are opportunities to stray out of mainline theory, or dive back into some random sicilian, depending on what you want to do -

2. nimzowitsch defense - in comparison with e4e5 it seems like an improvement for a club player - you can bypass all the kings gambit / bishops opening / center game crap white can respond with. 40% of players also go into the unique nimzowitsch line 1. e4 Nc6 2. d4 d5, which scores perfectly fine by the engine and isn't very common for white to face. There's also an almost never played line 1. e4 Nc6 2. Nc3 Nd4 which actually the engine quite likes, this allows you to avoid the whole vienna defense setup. And if you want to throw the opponent off even more in response to 2. Nf3 with the Williams defense or some other nimzo-specific line you have that option, or you can just transpose into a mainline position. No real downside to it but only played by 2% of players for whatever reason.

3. van geet - there are so many transpositions in this opening, and it's so rarely played, that the majority of the time your opponent will end up in a mainline position they never play. Yesterday I think my opponent ended up in an exchange philidor by move 4... no one wants that. It's all up to white which line they want to go into - usually you can choose between an e4 or d4 mainline, or a unique Van Geet line. All completely legitimate lines in their own right... the opening is criminally underrated

4. slav gambit -

If white responds correctly, which people rarely do, it's still a completely fine position for black that the engine likes as much as any other black opening. If white screws up, which almost everyone does, black usually gets quite a large advantage as he just retains the pawn and has great development / a complex dynamic position. Only played 5% of the time in this position but I would play this over transposing to a typical slav or semi slav any day. 
5. nimzowitsch sicilian -

I've been playing this sicilian for about a year. I think I've gotten the mainline "refutation", where black is down a pawn but has dynamic compensation and scores well in practice... maybe 3 or 4 times out of hundreds. About 1% of games at 2200+ elo reach the mainline position. The other lines... are just very confusing for white. Generally white has no idea what the position is or how to play it. But what I really like about it... is it avoids alot of the anti-sicilians. Tons of club players play these anti sicilians. And in some lines you can end up transposing into mainline sicilians, if you want to do that. So it's a cool line.

budapest gambit isn't anywhere near drawish if white knows his stuff (source: i played it myself)

alekhine's defense, well, most club players seem to know about it these days. When I played it the four pawns attack was seen as challenging, but is now seen as a borderline refutation. I guess you could call it underrated.

1.Nc3.... lol yeah agree

icelandic gambit hard disagree. Langheld gambit from the from's gambit is probably better than that. I don't think this opening is underrated at all. I think a3 should take this spot. You can transpose into many black openings with 1.a3 where the extra move a6 would be helpful. I've played this otb with good results.

czech pirc... certainly not worthy of number one. it's just a worse philidor transposition and more committal to the pawn structure. Instead I would suggest the norwegian defense:

Hey does anyone know what the woolly gambit is? I saw in another forum that it beat Maximum Bot

play the englund gambit!

The best openings are always closings. XD

Thanks for sharing!