Why is 8.Qe2 a good move in this French Alapin Diemer Gambit?

After starting to learn the Fantasy/Maroczy version as something strong to play against Caro Kanns which have been driving me nuts, at one point facing SEVEN of them in just two days and seeing that the Alapin Diemer French has A LOT of the same positional themes, I've been studying that some today, but keep getting hung up on THIS move which is the strongest PERFORMING one in amateur games  8.Qe2

- "The e file is closed" Nope. It is only semi-closed. So White can use it to control a lot of squares, most importantly e5.

- "I am no fan of lines that put my queen in front of my king begging for a trade." well thats your style, but try to be more openminded. Black has no way of trading Queens. Qe2 actually made a trade less likely, as the Queen is moving away of the d-file.

- "8.c3  is the next strongest performing move." I guess you mean 8.a3 ?

- "I don't understand the concepts behind them, but can parrot them until tactical opportunities arise." Well that the wrong way. But your question is a move in the right direction. It is way better to understand principles and ideas than remembering a sequence of moves.

- "Could it be a setup for potentially castling queenside?" It could. It is always nice not showing your cards to Black. Probably 0-0 is better, and a Rook to d1.

- "If you can tell me what the queen TARGETS." c4 and b5 - and potentially e4 and e5. 

- "which scores a full 11% worse." Don't rely to much on the scores. 

[quote]- "which scores a full 11% worse." Don't rely to much on the scores. [/quote]

Oh I trust scores more than ANY groundmustard or stalefish evaluation. scores tell the untold truth about gambits in particular. scores tell me where ATTACKING positions happen. it's very common to see moves that are evaluated up to 5 points down, yet winning 70% or more of the time. 

"official evaluations" don't take into account the mistakes amateurs and even grandmasters who, contrary to mythology, are humans who sometimes miss mates in 1.

my brain isn't wired to understand the weird voodoo science behind positional themes short of "capture towards the center" and if the position is open, attack in the center and on the flanks iff closed, but just a SIMPLE pawn ending eludes me. I couldn't make sense of the chinese with a speech impediment in not one or even two, but FOUR different chess books that included "best lessons of a chess coach" & "my system". they literally didn't speak my language. the only time I ever mastered the pawn ending was interactively with FICS' tutorial, but when i finally faced one a month or two later, I was right back to losing them every time, yet I was able to learn the 2 bishops mate EASILY the first time I read about that. I can VUSUALIZE herding a king to a corner and wasting a tempo to avoid stale mating.

It's FRUSTRATING, and hypermodern and closed games drive me nuts, but out in the open, I'm a shark when it comes to finding tactics and it surprises me how blind to obvious ones like placing a queen on the same diagonal as the king some players are. I can guard against tactics too, but PAWNS are my natural enemies. I'll trade a minor piece to get rid of 2 pawns if I see an attack.

when i was a 1450 years ago, a snotty 1700+ tried to belittle my lack of positional understanding, yet I stomped him 2 times in a row. in one game, he let me bring BOTH of my center pawns all the way to queening while he feebly tried to defend against it with his rooks. My attack was positional, maybe, but I looked at it in terms of what each of our pieces could do.

this is why I've been studying to FINALLY stop losing so many carokann & french games. the monte carlo is a complete waste of time because no-one will accept the gambit. I destroyed the one opponent who did without even booking up. he let me get my bishop to c4 and knight to f3. THAT's a "position" I understand... even live for.

the 2 pirc/modern miniatures I got cave man style were DELICIOUS. 

back when the Qe2/Rd1/Rc1 formation still worked in the smith morra a decade ago, my win rate in that opening was close to, or even better than 90% with maybe 50 lines worth of theory memorized the hard way with a hand written tree, a physical board and a couple pieces of paper. had I played nothing but smith morras, my rating would have been over 200 points higher simply using the same trusted formation and waiting for something to chomp on.

it's much harder now despite my mid 1600s rating as sicilians have found a bunch of tricky lines making Qe2 mostly a relic. I was never able to beat sicilians at all before that despite trying the grand prix, advance and even wing gambit with lousy theory from that lousy book, half of which wasn't even about wing gambit anyways.

thank you for your thoughtful reply. I'm going to open a board up in another window and see if I can make sense of your reply.

when it comes to my queen, I generally don't like to move her at all until there's already action for her to join in on (Nf3/Bc4 > f7+). If my queen is getting chased, there's a good chance I'll put her in danger. that's why I was happy to drop the Qxd5 scandinavian and hated the latvian gambit. queen in front of king = extreme danger best avoided in my world. i'm still struggling to "waste a tempo" getting my king to h1 ahead of my bishop blocking pawn chains which eventually crumble. i just file the position away as safe and forget the initiative inviting danger.

as far as I'm concerned about the e file, there's no such thing as "semi" there's a powerful deterrent i'm reall bad at overcoming. I hate playing either side of advance variations which i've done poorly against the french with too what with my own pawns in the way of tearing king a new one. fianchettos drive me nuts too. i lose so many games trying to tear them down or trying to break through them. that's why I sac minor pieces for 2 pawns which is the most reliable way i know to handle them. not 100%, but not 0% either

there might be no IMMEDIATE way for black to x-ray my queen, but all it takes is a move like e5 to totally ruin my day. i hate pawns. i don't knw how to trade them properly in complex, sometimes even simple situations. a pair of pawns backed by a minor piece is as good as lost for me. I know my weaknesses, mainly foofy hard to visualize pawn tricks. sometimes I turn the tables, but just by visualizing what they can do and only understanding the positional aspects on a subliminal or familiarity level.

b4 & b5 are generally irrelevant to me unless there an 0-0-0. I'm all about f7.

as if to prove my point, this game only got worse after the queen trade I got snookered into

The only positional theme of the "Alapin Diemer French" is being a pawn down for nothing.

How the heck are we supposed to answer this question?

You say yourself... you memorize moves and wait for tactics. Ok, so memorize Qe2.

Why would I play Qe2? Well, the e and f files are where your heavy pieces (queen and rooks) probably belong. They belong there because there are no friendly pawns on those files, so they will tend to be most active there.

I know you dislike "positional language" but you can't have tactics if you don't have active pieces, and putting heavy pieces on half open files is beginner level advice on activating pieces... so try to understand this at least.

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The rook on d1 has 9 legal moves. The rook on e1 only 5.

With just 1 move, the rook on d1 can influence most squares on the c file or d file, or 3rd rank, or 5th rank, or 6th rank. After 1 move the rook on e1 can only influence most squares on the 3rd rank.

You can think of higher mobility as a higher probability that a piece will find a useful way to attack (or defend) in the future. A piece that can potentially attack 50 different squares in just 1 move is more likely to help you attack than a piece that can only influence 5 different squares in 1 move.

I hope that makes sense.

Practice tactics. When you punish nearly 100% of your opponent's simple bunders, and make nearly zero simple mistakes, then a strange thing will start happening...

... occasionally you'll lose games but you wont understand why. You didn't blunder anything, and material was equal, but somehow your opponents keep finding ways to attack a pawn that you can't defend... or maybe you can defend it, but if you do you'll lose something else. Over and over somehow their pieces just seem to be the ones attacking and yours are stuck defending... and even though you can see their simple threats, there's no way to prevent losing material.

That's when positional concepts will start to make sense.

Before that, yeah, it's just a bunch of voodoo blah blah blah... how the heck will a doubled pawn or the bishop pair matter? Weak square on e3? If the square is empty why would it matter! etc.

I think you are overthinking this move. There isn’t a huge difference between e2 and d2 for the queen. When you look at the master games stats for openings that are not played a lot by super GM’s (like the Blackman Diemer Gambit) the stats can be messed up because you can have crazy rating mismatches (like a 2200 vs a GM) or just a game between 2 masters where black is better but white won off a blunder. My best guess would be since it looks like black is castling kingside, and white is down a pawn, you might want to get your queen on the kingside which is easier from e2 than d2.

At low depth the engine recommends the move a3 to stop Nb4. You mentioned you didn’t like Nd5 but there the engine says to take on d5 and castle short with equality (which means good prospects considering you gambited a pawn). 

UGH! I don't know HOW I "violated guidelines", but my whole point with this thread was trying to overcome my mental limitations when it comes to position and that vexing Qe2 move that's hard for me to memorize. 

now instead of continuing my "i know both my strengths AND weaknesses" argument here, I'll go on to share the gedult gambit game i played PERFECTLY for a 12 move win purely by INSTINCT. no booking up AT ALL.

I play MOSTLY at LiChess where EVERYONE's opponents are closely matched and use THAT database, at 2000 and under ratings only too. that's how I get my REAL WORLD theory I remember begging for decades ago with hater trolls constantly asking me "why do you want to see low rated games?"

1. because that's WHAT I PLAY

2. it's the only way to build a book for all the OUT OF BOOK stuff GMs leave me out to dry for like that ANNOYING 1.e4 d5 2.e5!? "just play Bf5 and you'll be fine" crap in a book I wasted money on when 2.e5 STILL drives me crazy because i absolutely have to play Nc3/Nc6 to be happy.

3. it's how i find all the juicy mistakes even 1900 rated players are making

4. it lets me chose my OWN repertoire. I won't likely EVER study the better performing quaade gambit. I'm a Bc4 player and always will be. I do terribly in early Nc3/Nc6 lines. I'm not an Nc3 guy. I'm an Nf3 guy.

After e4 d5 e5 I believe c5 immediately is strong for Black.