Why is the polish opening so good yet never played?

This is the ultimate contradiction of this type of person who plays gambits and offbeat openings.

They say they like aggressive gambits and sharp play. Then what about the Najdorf and Open Sicilian? Some of the most aggressive openings in chess? That's too much theory apparently, but they spend the time to memorise 40+, 30 move deep, engine lines in some gambit to try to make it work.

Play how you want but that makes no sense lol.

I think that it's important that I point out that the Sokolsky is not an aggressive tactical opening. It is very solid and positional in most lines (this is part of the reason why I gave it up: too much of a style clash).

I personally would probably do quite well with the Najdorf and Open Sicilian. I just haven't had a reason to learn them since I've been doing well with my existing repertoire and am trying to fill other gaps (for example, I've learned the French because I already have the Alekhine and want an opening for situations where I would be okay with a draw).

I generally agree, but I suspect one of the counter-arguments would be that playing those popular openings would mean it is more likely your opponent knows just as much as you do (maybe more), while doing the same thing for the offbeat stuff would mean you are likely to know more ... At least until you start playing the same people repeatedly and they develop refutations to your pet lines.

It actually does follow opening principles, just not in the typical way. The Sokolsky is a very hypermodern opening where you control the centre using mainly your pieces. The c-pawn does usually go to c4 and the d-pawn does sometimes come to d4 though.

An important thing to understand about (good) offbeat openings is that just because an opening is weird, that does not mean that you leave your opening principles (controlling the centre, developing your pieces, getting your king to safety) behind; you just might do them in a different way.

Silican Defense: Closed is what they are talking about.

I can see that perspective but once you play against people who know what they're doing they will be more likely to understand how to exploit the weaknesses of those openings intuitively as well as knowing something about them.

g3, b3 and Nc3 are better than b4.

• g3 can transpose into a KIA, Catalan or English.
• b3 allows the queenside fianchetto without exposing the b pawn.
• Nc3 can transpose into a Vienna, Richter-Veresov or Jobava London.

b4 is in the realm of f4, c3, e3, a3 but to be honest it's still not as good as a lot of these.

• f4 is a reversed Dutch.
• c3 can still transpose into stuff the Torre Attack and London which are somewhat respectable.
• a3 and e3 can transpose into an English.

I would say the Polish is probably better than the Grob g4, and Barnes Opening f3. It's better than these.

In general, yes. However, when you play something that isn't usually played at your level, the likelihood you opponent remembers the refutation to a specific idea is much lower. Marc Esserman will often mention his draw against Vishy Anand. Vishy decided to decline the Smith-Morra Gambit instead of trying to recall his notes. If Marc was going to be playing in several tournaments where Vishy was likely to play him, you can be assured Vishy would have looked up his notes and accepted the Gambit. But when you play someone only once there is not much of a reason to have something for it.

At my local club, there are a couple class A players who have an affinity for offbeat stuff. The Sokolsky player has recently switched to the Nimzo-Larsen because he was getting too many draws against 1500s who looked up how to equalize into very drawish endgames and he was not willing to go into more risky lines to try to outplay them The Grob player has switched to the Trompowsky (because literally everyone above 1000 had looked up the lines that kill all his tactics and leave him with a bad game) with mixed results (interestingly enough, he had a decent solid Black repertoire with the French/Caro/Sicilian and has recently decided to try the North Sea Defense with not so pleasant results).

Personally, it is not my preference, but I do know people who would rather get a worse position out of the opening for psychological reasons (i.e. their brain "wakes up" when they are fighting from behind).

Yeah and the Dutch is actually a somewhat respected opening whereas the reversed Polish and St.George are garbage just like the Polish. It's actually relevant to the centre controlling the e5 square and preparing to develop the knight behind the pawn.

Lets go back to the objective evals then.

g3, b3, f4, Nc3, e3 all have way higher winrates than b4.

"Listen to the master giving you free advice" Lmao dude. Don't get ahead of yourself. All you do is lash out and cry at others online because you're mad that they insulted your garbage openings.

I just point out the obvious fact that the Polish isn't a good opening and you start throwing a tantrum like a little toddler.

Sit down, shut your mouth and learn some humility.

darkunorthodox88:

"THE POLISH IS GOOD. SH-SHUDDUP. YOU'RE A CHIMP. I'M A MASTER."

1. f4 is worse than 1. b4 objectively. 1. b4 helps with development of your dark-squared bishop which will in turn help control the centre. 1. f4 does help control the centre, but it does not help with development; worse yet, it weakens your king.

The reason why the reversed Sokolsky is not playable is because it is too slow. You have to play a6 to support the b5 pawn. When played with White, our extra tempo is put to good use and we do not generally need to play a3 (in most lines White will react to attacks on the b-pawn by just pushing it!). An issue with playing the Dutch as White is that it is a very reactive opening: your best plan of attack is very often dependent on how your opponent has committed their pieces and you need as much information as possible. Thus, the extra tempo is often best spent on a waiting move like Kh1.

No you're the one who doesn't listen. I have explained all that stuff you talked about and investigated the lines. You haven't explained anything.

You're the one who's actually acting like a chimp. Instead of explaining anything through evidence you just get angry and insult and intimidate. You act like a bully. It's pathetic.

It doesn't even matter who's right. The way you talk and behave is so pathetic. Just because you don't like someone's opinion you go absolutely berserk and start insulting. Someone should have disciplined you properly as a child. I can't even imagine how much of a pain it must be to deal with you in real life.

Like I said. Sit down, shut your mouth and learn some humility.

This may be a bit off topic, but in my research into a new opening, I ran into an interesting situation where the engine finds 0.00 (with several options for Black to maintain the balance), but White had massive plus scores at the GM-level. PHN mentioned the same on the Chicken Chess Podcast several weeks ago. Specifically, the engine will almost always reduce to 0.00 in a somewhat reasonable line, but, then the question becomes how easy is it for the other side to find an active plan.

While I have not run into that many lines of the Polish where White has that problem, it is worth noting that in general just saying "the engine says it is 0.00 so it must be okay" is a bit like looking up the answer to your calculus homework in the back of the book and just checking the answer (but not the process).

dang, powerful words, man - looks like the poor dude got muted!

This is true. Very often in the Sokolsky the position will be 0.0 because the opponent will have played in a way that is very symmetric (I personally found 1. b4 b6 to be quite annoying in the past) but there are some more imbalanced lines where White does very well.

For example:

Is a position where the engine gives a slight edge to Black and yet White wins more games than Black (winning 50% of games and drawing 27% of games at the master level). Here White's plan is to at some point play either c4 or d4 and break at Black's centre with support for their pieces and go on the offensive. Black's plan is... Oh dear! I don't know Black's plan!

I liked that dude but it was bound to happen, he likes confrontation. Hope he comes back tho.

The biggest misunderstanding I hear commonly about engines is that they can evaluate positions.
"This position is +0.6" and "This position is -0.03" are not inherently true statements when consulting an engine.
If an engine at depth 50 says 0.00, what it means is that with best play from both players, 25 moves from the position, the position will still be perfectly even. The engine didn't actually evaluate that position, it evaluated a theoretical position much farther down the road.
A fantastic example of this is the King's Gambit, where engines will always tell you Black is much better on move 2. They aren't wrong, but their reasoning certainly is. White may have 5-6 great ways to attack in a position, each with their own many attacking ideas and chances, while Black is forced to play a series of only-moves where one slight misstep means forced mate.

The system automuted me because I said he was being a pain in the a word. That's a bad, bad word. Lol.

I have returned triumphantly against all odds.