What do you think of Bird Opening 1.f4 e5 A02

Well Mestel is a GM and he played it again Taylor who wrote a book on 1. f4 (more than once, I think?) and won, although that was quite a while back. Maybe GMs don't play it now. Here's one of the games http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1434303  Before everything completely goes nuts, well you can clearly see what Black gets out of this gambit. After Ng4 Black is already threatening to take on h2. White has holes in the Kingside because they played f4, so White has to make a Queen move to make an escape square for the King, and the tactics keep going and getting weirder. Maybe it's not enough, but it's certainly fun to play like this in Blitz, and anyway my main point, it's not as if GMs have never played like this.

You should ask Ben Fiengold what he thinks.  

My money's on "very suspicious," but I could be wrong.

More like "Never play f4."  Period.  

I play f4 a lot as white.  There are two ways to play From's gambit with black: one is to go for an all out attack from the start, which loses if white is prepared but obviously playable in blitz or at lower levels.  The other is to just develop and play a pawn down but try to put pressure on white, especially on the weaker dark squares.  This was Mestel's idea.  He played Bd6 and Nc6 with black but didn't go for the quick kill.  He went for development, initiative, and pressure.  Again, white is fine if he knows what to do but black's setup is playable in real world conditions. 

As a note, I recently crushed a titled player in blitz in the main line From with the white pieces (on another site) and used virtually no time to do it.  I think the TC was 2+1 and after 25 moves or so I was a full piece up in an endgame with no comp and had used about 10 seconds of clock.  Main line From (the Lasker variation) is completely busted.  Theory runs 15-20 moves deep and it's hopeless for black.

First, I think that the From Gambit is a fine way to meet 1.f4 IF Black knows what he's doing (which rarely happens).

The old, caveman way to attack with it isn't terribly good, and leaves white with an advantage:

Black can either keep the bishop (9...Be5) or speed up his development (9...f5, 9...Bf5), but in all cases white holds some advantage. Of course Black's position is perfectly playable (surely enough nothing remotely close to #10 "Black loses if white is prepared"), but I think that the positional way to play 4...Nf6! is much better. White's most testing move (between several) is probably 5.e3, when Black has a choice between the somewhat speculative (but still perfectly playable) 5..0-0, or getting the pawn back more or less by force after 5...Ng4 6.d4 Qe7, which leads to a quite complex position with approximately balanced chances.

The game in #1, and in general play with such a quick ...Bg4 do not make much sense to me- e.g.

- what is wrong with the simple and natural 5.e4?

- Unless one believes in engine's evaluations under short time controls (which is never such a bright idea when exploring an opening) the most natural reaction to 5...Nc6 is of course 6.Bb5! which questions the whole Black setup.

All that said, I do think that opening like 1.f4 and followed by the "Bird Leningrad", as GM Marin calls his new pet system (and he has even authored an opening course on it), is a fine way to play as white- certainly with a few thousand tons less theory than 1.e4, 1.d4, 1.c4, or 1.Nf3... It's certainly nothing new (the Leningrad Dutch which highly resembles this is quite well analysed), but still, a rather fresh way to play as white. If one stays at the strict engine evaluations about a certain opening position, he simply misses the whole thing- there is no way stupid outputs like +0.70 or -0.85 explaining what is happening on the board, and how the game would proceed.

In the game you posted white has 7. d4 which is much better than Nc3.  White plays d4/Qd3/c3 and develops his pieces.  Black has no comp for the pawn in the Lasker Variation.

The positional variations are playable (I suppose) but black is worse.

I stand by my assessment that the Lasker is busted and I'd be willing to play anyone at any rating in that line  

No, it isn't.

Actually after 7.d4 Ng6 8.Nxg6 hxg6 9.Qd3 Nc6 10.c3 the debate is if Black should play 10...Qe7 or 10...Be6 first. The latter is probably a tad more accurate, but anyway- after 10...Be6 11.Bg2 Qe7 the position has been played (mainly in ICCF) dozens of times, and the draw percentage is very high. Of course, you are entitled to your own assessment.

Black simply wouldn't bother about provoking something like e2-e4 by an early ...Bf5, and develop smoothly. White has a couple of long- term positional headaches: What to do with the rather clumsy c1 bishop, and the semi-open h-file.

7.Nc3 is the choice of both Grandmasters which have analysed the Bird in some detail, (Henrik Danielsen and Mihai Marin), and - sorry to say, I'd rather take their word than yours.

I'd tend to believe the IM

knighttour2 does believe the IM (Tim Taylor), which is a strong player, but he has not authored a good book since the time pigs could fly.

His Bird book, back in 2004 or so, is included, although he has done worse than that, for sure.

Taylor's line has worked for me against titled players in blitz and I haven't had the privilege against trying it OTB.  My offer still stands to play the main line against any strong player interested.

Don't like it, but as almost any opening, if well played you won't really lose the game from the opening. A couple of weeks ago i saw a IM or GM streaming (don't remember who) playing 1.a3 ... 2.h3 (1.a6 ... 2.h6) all the time. Won almost all games (i think he lost one) . Is that opening good? Well if you are stronger everything works...

Bird's Opening can be effective against players like me who don't know what they're doing.