I Hate the Scandinavian. How to crush?

3...Qd5 is very rare, I can't remember the last time I faced it, so even if 4.Nc3 is best it's not like you're going to be playing the main lines very often. That being said, white has a few other options. Keilhack reccomends 4.Qf3, which is what I've always played, 4.Ng3 is also fine. Both can lead to fun, less typical positions. 4.Nc3 is an atrocious practical decision, since black is inviting the transposition and is likely to be more familiar than white in the main line Scandi positions.

this is a better forum for chess advice.  🙂

Well this all leads to instant equality. The topic is how to crush the Scandi and it only can be done with 2.exd5 and 3.Nc3.

3.Nf3 is possible but there is a small path to equality in this 3...Bg4 line and nothing new has been found.

I havnt played any  Scandinavians yet so I cant say

@YouEvenLiftBro - there's no such thing as a tutorial that really teaches anything useful or fun against the Scandi without losing your advantage. Remember: the Scandi player plays it every time so if they are any good, they've seen everything because there's not a lot to see).

There are two types of Scandi players: at the lower levels there are those who play it sort of like a slightly more sophisticated Wayward Queen attack by sliding their queen to h5 and playing for tricks.  They either try to target the c2 pawn with a knight fork, or failing that, they try to swing the queen kingside to a5 later to attack the king, and they always try to set it up with a bishop to c2. It's as predictable as Lindsay Lohan ending up in court.

The more "sophisticated" Scandi player retreats the queen (usually to d6 or d8), sets up a super solid Caro Kann pawn structure. The main plan here is to try to bore you to death.

@Illingworth, a GM wrote an article here on chess.com encapsulating how the Scandinavian is a crime against chess in 4 simple steps. Mind you, this is a direct quote:

"1. You virtually force a specific pawn structure in the Scandinavian. This means that you only need to master one type of position. 2. Your first 10-15 moves in the Scandinavian are generally the same (or similar) setups, with familiar middlegame and endgame plans from there. 3. You will often gain a time advantage early in the game. You can play standard ideas quickly, and rely on your greater experience and understanding of the positions... 4. You can master the Scandinavian relatively quickly, as there’s not a lot of opening theory to learn."

The citation from this peddler of ennui grandmaster is here: https://www.chess.com/blog/Illingworth/how-karpov-won-with-the-scandinavian.

THIS is why I hate the Scandinavian. This is why it's filth. This is why I resign and block. I don't want to play the same game over and over and over again. It's mindless, tedious, and uncreative, and it's pure torture to an attention-devoid individual such as myself.

For those of you who are interested in how to approach the Scandinavian as white, check this out:



This seems like a pretty active approach against it. Granted, he himself admits that Scandi is  fine for black if black knows what he is doing, but that one is obvious anyway.

Warning: It is over 3 hours long, so it is not for everyone.

I go for this setup against scandi, don't know if its sound or not, but seems to work

What sort of racist forum is this?

At our level they aren't any good though. I don't think losing a theoretical advantage in the opening matters for non-masters.

@fissionfowl

you have an 88% accuracy rate on rapid, that's exceedingly good, that's higher than Gotham. How much do you study? What books do you recommend

You can't compare it though. They do not have the same opponents. Sure, you will play better moves on average as you get better, but it is not the same to have a good accuracy against an opponent with an average rating of 1 620 and a good accuracy against titled players.

Imagine if one basketball player plays in the NBA and has 36% 3 point shooting, and on the other hand we have someone who plays some business basketball league with colleagues and has the same 3 point shooting percentage. It can't really be compared.

What nklristic said.

@optimissed - I don't know why people feel compelled to tell me that I should play against this opening. I'm never going to have to prepare for it in a tournament, I don't care about my rating, and I play for fun. If my main goal is to have fun and this opening causes me to have the opposite of fun, tell me why I should bother? My opponent gets the win and all is well with the world.

Think about what GM Illingworth is saying. He's saying that people should choose the Scandinavian **because** it's a theoretical wasteland where you don't have to remember anything and you can play it the same almost every time. Perhaps there are minor ways to mix it up, but in my experience the games are all the same. Not fun. Not gonna do it. Why are people so appalled that I won't play a game that I don't like?

It is within your right. I will not dispute that.

In my experience Scandinavian brings out some wild games from time to time, a few times it occurred in my games. The reason is because I probably wish to punish loss of tempi and I either overextend (with long castle and some pawn pushes) or my opponent messes up. I have a lot of equal games for my level (10% draws), and I don't think any of those were in Scandinavian. Especially modern variation tends to be tricky when black sacrifices the pawn for a short while.

For instance Caro Kann is a really solid opening, it can have a similar pawn structure, but my Caro Kann opponents tend to be more timid than my Scandinavian ones.

Advance the e pawn move 2.

I think familiarity and understanding of the typical positions is the thing that's important for us, not if one side has a theoretical edge out of the opening. That evaluation will likely vary wildly throughout the game anyway at our level.

U might be joking but if white plays 2. e5 then giving up pressure on d5 allows black all kinds of goodies as it relates to rapid development and juicy squares. Starting with 2.... c5 he can increase control over the center & he can target e5 in many ways. If white tries to strengthen e5 with d4 then black just trades with cd & starts slapping whites center around like a red headed step child. White ends up defending a fragile center. 

Advance Caro Kann is weak? Then why is it probably the most played variation by white? Of course, in Scandinavian playing e4 and then e5 makes no sense, except for some shock value.