How NOT TO PLAY The Opening In Chess

@tonytte I like your approach, I a lot of the times even force myself to play openings that lead to the type of positions that I don't like for the sake of getting better. For example if you are very attacking player, one may highly benefit from analyzing and playing more quite openings like Berlin Endgame or Petrov. That doesn't mean that you will continue playing these openings forever, but the times when attack is not an option you won't panic and be able to play quite and technical positions better!

I think it was destiny so that you would write this comment and we get connected. Maybe we can become friends now, maybe even the best of friends. Anyways, that's the story I am sticking to!

I have the following observation related to the above comments by @MelvinGarvey:

Chess engines like Lc0 and Stockfish agree with him when limited to searching low number of nodes (100 for Lc0, 10k for Stockfish). This is ridiculously low and the results are produced in less than an eyeblink.

The same engines when working under more typical limitations (10k for Lc0, 100M for Stockfish) produce results agreeing with @Kestony after working for some mumble-teens of seconds.

Lc0 version that is CPU-only is slow enough that one can observe how it considers less and less moves in the position discussed until finally settling on the two choice moves mentioned in the Youtube video by @Kestony.

Also Maia chess engines designed to mimic the play of humans rated in the range 1100-1900 also make broader choices as mentioned by @MelvinGarvey. Those 'engines' are basically Lc0 with differently trained neural nets.

All in all, seems like the default settings for the chess engines on this site (and also others) aren't really helpful for beginners or other players that don't know or don't have time to do deep calculations. Especially the limitation to show maximum of 5 principal variations is detrimental to education and studying chess, although it helps with winning chess matches.

In place of 'handy' maybe a better word would be 'cheap'. As far as know Chessbase and Fritz aren't free. On the other hand Stockfish, Lc0 and Nibbler are free to download.

Two pictures maybe worth two thousand words. I made two screengrabs of Nibbler showing Stockfish with the above mentioned settings. At 10 kilo-nodes it considers 4...Qh4 the #1 move. After visiting 100 mega-nodes 4...Nf6 and 4...Bc5 are #1 and #2 moves.

https://imgur.com/a/fHtO1nb

I'll try to insert pictures directly once I figure it out how to do that. Edi: OK, I can see the images, but the resolution isn't good enough to read the text. But the link above continues to work for me.  

You really seem to have lost the plot and are unaware that you are posting in a forum targeted to beginners. Your painstakingly collected and analyzed statistics matter very little to the prospective readers, players and students following this forum. Even if you had paid hundreds of euros for your Chessbase MegaBase and Fritz 11, they are history and of interest to retro-computing enthusiasts.

You started by accusing @Kestony of producing 'pure natural fertilizer' based on his omission of certain variations of the Scotch game. Since I just had a lesson about it I followed up and researched. He omitted one of the three named variations (Steinitz 4...Qh4) mentioning only two (Classical 4...Bc7 and Schmidt 4...Nf6). The Opening Explorer on this site adds the fourth named variation (Malaniuk 4....Bb4+).

So more even-handed analysis shows that @Kestony produced about 33% to 50% natural fertilizer. not something 100% pure. Perhaps he will care to chime in and explain why he didn't mentioned (even in passing) other options for the player. Was this somehow related to the Chessbase software that he was using to produce the video?

You really should've kept up with the developments in the field of chess engines. Your Fritz 11 is badly obsolete not only because it is relatively weak but also because it doesn't support the newest research. Most of the modern chess engines support not only old-style centipawn evaluations (CP), but also new-style win-draw-loss evaluations (WDL). Lots of work has also been done in various means of reducing the engine strength and make them reasonably truthfully emulate various styles of human play and human mistakes.

The current Chessbase Fritz 17 engine still doesn't support WDL statistics estimator. But the free upgrades of Fat Fritz 1 and Fat Fritz 2.0 do support those as well as Chessbase Chessprogram17 user interface than can be used to host all kinds of other engines like Stockfish, Lc0 & Komodo. 

Every chess beginner owes to himself learning the meaning of various dials and buttons that are available on the engines that he's using. Not to make them stronger, but to make them weaker and more helpful in analysis and practice. Engines aren't 'oracles' as you've said. They are just a very fast machines that calculate what they are told to do.

Learn how to control them or just resign to be a chess luddite.

@kalafiorczyk Since it seems that you are sincerely interested in honest opinion of mine, I will elaborate. The answer to the question why I haven't included particular moves in the the video is very simple: because I felt like I don't have to mention them, to explain the main objective or concept that I want the viewers to take away from the video. It's possible to ask why I haven't mentioned that you could also play 1.d4/1.c4/1.Nf3 instead of 1.e4.. or why after 1.e4 e5 I haven't mentioned that white can play 2.Nc3/2.d4... Also, the fact that the opening or variation does/doesn't have a name, does not mean it's a good/bad opening that a teacher should/should not mention. The bottom line is that video is not about learning the Scotch opening's theory, it's about a particular game where opponent made typical mistakes in the opening which were punished in an instructive way that beginners can learn from. I teach chess for 10 years and play chess since I was a baby, I not only know the alternatives that were suggested, I have analyzed all of them in depth at some point in my life.

I am also finding it a bit funny to be accused of not knowing lines like 4..Qh4 even though I have made videos on those months/years ago. Usually when I make a video on practical opening that is objectively inferior to others, I am not necessarily trying to promote those openings, but rather I am just educating on various ways to play the game, be it objectively good or not.

Hope this makes sense 

@Kestony Thank you very much for your explanation. I really appreciate your elaboration. Witch chess openings in particular the meta-learning is as important as learning. By meta-learning I mean learning of methods used to abridge the voluminous theoretical literature into something manageable for a player (whatever is their level).

With beginners it is especially important to be able to produce comprehensible and easy-to-understand material, even if the particular itemized decisions to omit are completely arbitrary.

At the beginner level even 1.f3 ... 2.g4 ... is playable. Either because of the opponent misses the fool's mate or because he has a sense of humor and doesn't mind playing outside of the book.

@kalafiorczyk " Either because of the opponent misses the fool's mate or because he has a sense of humor and doesn't mind playing outside of the book." made be smile Wonderful quote