The Working Mind when Facing an Inferior Opening

As long as an opening is reputed to be weak, it can be played - Tartakower

I wont be surprised if Tartakower really said that, afterall, he did invent 1.b4 !

Oh, he did. My source is "The Oxford Companion to Chess" By David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld.

sry - my comment wasnt meant to come out as a doubt

Seriously, though, I play "inferior" openings as a matter of course. A while ago I posted about 1... b5 as a possible answer to 1 e4, (a bit tongue in cheek of course), and tried it in a few games. My best win, against a player 300 points above me, was with this. He employed the strategy mentioned earlier of not "grabbing" the pawn. Didn't work too well in this case. I suspect my success rate with this is no worse than with any other Black reply to e4. I reckon at the level I'm playing at almost anything goes. Especially against much stronger players. I see little point in following the book for 20 moves just to reach a position my opponent probably understands better than me. I rather lead us both into a swamp and hope he falls into a hole before I do. (Apologies to Simon Webb for the analogy)

my apologies - I shouldve made it clearer - I dnt think that I would go out for a quick attack against 1...b5 as it looks like a fun opening to play against!

What I actually meant was openings which is unorthodox, yet offers no fun for either side to play against. I usually get bored, and can't stop myself playing to spice up the game a bit (unsound sacs etc).

"Unorthodox openings" are coming both from beginners and also from those who have both deep knowledge of the openings and long playing experience. In my opinion, one should know how to handle "on the board play" - one which may not come from regular openings, but whose opening moves have specific targets and objectives. With the computer having analyzed voluminous chess openings, many chess players have studied on their own or has developed on their own,  new lines ripe enough for testing in actual play. For some, these new lines would appear "weak" and they will actually start very aggressive attack but would somehow fizzle out after they, themselves, have created real weaknesses on their own games.

@ogerboy:

I know your post is old, but I know exactly what you mean.  You're talking about playing opponents who seem to make up their own moves that don't follow any particular book opening.  Their opening my seem somewhat hypermodern as they may start out with (if white) maybe e3, b3, h3, etc. where they place a very strong bishop and/or leave a hook on their kingside which seems exploitable maybe with a g-file attack, yet at the same token might jeopordize your own king safety as maybe you've already gained space on the queenside and therefore extending on the kingside may not give you anywhere to castle.  Moreover, the inferior looking h3 move may leave your without an aggresive square (g5) to post the bishop on, and thus whites fiachettoed bishop on b3 is very strong, stronger then your bishops.  With an extended center, it may be hard to dampen this bishop or it may cost you too much time to place your own bishop in opposition to his in order to challenge his bishop.  Moreover, with white moves like Nh2 followed by Ng4, he may threaten to get his queen involved on the kingside at which point you may be castle on the kingside and with his queen and bishop bearing down, it can be a lot of pressure.

Maybe the simple plan is to establish and pawn wedge maybe with your pawns on e5, d4, c5 to blunt the white fianchettoed bishop, castle kingside and expand/break open the queenside.  I really don't know how to deal with it myself, all I know right now is in such openings my openent's queen's bishop and kingside pressure is often too much.