I Hate the Scandinavian. How to crush?

thats the spirit.. I always wanted to be that kind of person. stop.. kill.. continue.

Challenge me

blueemu the difference is that white hasn't commited to d4 yet & his development advantage shouldn't be underestimated.

Jerry_Attrich is an expert in my area who specializes in this line:  he's currently 2125 blitz (99.5th percentile) & has countless wins with his pet opening on here.

mike's in my friends list if you want to see the opening in action... just click on any game he's won.

Nothing stops him. But white is fine in all lines, he can get a position reminiscent of the Rubinstein french. if he wishes he can also play a setup involving Bc4, Nf3, d3 (instead of d4) where the "extra tempo" from black getting to play ...c5 in one move isn't really annoying.

If black wants to punish 2.Nc3 he ought to play 2...d4 3.Nce2 e5 4.Ng3 Be6 and black is probably slightly better because of his space advantage and because white struggles to develop his light squared bishop after 5.c3 a6. However, the chances of an opponent playing these are close to 0, and white's practical chances of outplaying black in the complicated closed positions to follow are fairly high.

It is also a pet line of mine, I probably have a few thousand games in this line and according to my lichess stats I score almost 75% with it against typical opponents between 2300-2500 rated. Although I reach it with the move order 1.Nc3 d5 2.e4

that's how mike transposes to it too... you guys would make a great bughouse team.

2.Nc3 gives nothing. After dxe4 3.Nxe4 Qd5?!: What do you do anyway? I thought you dont want to play the mainlines? There is no good way to avoid them.

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.

My daughter in law is one.

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

<<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.>>

You should definitely be able to get play against Qd6 and Qd8 didn't have a great reputation, except that it doesn't lose by force. Aren't you just admitting that you can't find a way to play that's creative and aggressive enough to get winning chances? If you have hopes of being a good player, you would have to find ways to win such games. Admittedly I gave up trying but the Centre Counter wasn't the only problem. I also disliked the Alekhine. Although I would win against it in Rapid and Blitz, by playing the four pawns attack, I didn't know the lines will enough to beat good players at slowplay.

So with one thing and another I changed to 1. c4 and found my results improved a lot. But wins against 1800 FIDE players were taking 60 to 70 moves after 1. c4 and I wanted faster wins so I wasn't tired out in the last round of tournaments and I switched to 1. d4, which I decided was potentially more aggressive than either 1. d4 or 1. c4 and I was getting wins inside 40 moves and often inside 30 with 1. d4. That's definitely the way to go, although the King's Indian is usually a 50 move job because white has to win on the queenside, the way I play it. But against badly played Slavs and Chigorins, often wins in 25 to 30 moves. And such openings take a good player to play well as black, so there's no disgrace in occasionally drawing. Sometimes when I was playing well, I'd draw with white and win with black.

Also, are you listening to the wrong advice, since this Illingworth doesn't seem worthy of the title?

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.