Why do people even use Wayward Queen Attack? It is completely useless to me -_-

And fails later. Then what?

you are missing one crucial detail. there are indeed very few responses to repel the attack, but the responses that don't, are including things like this:

and this

where black is making huge and obvious blunders. Really the,"few" responses that repel the attack are played 99.999999% of the time if you are a complete beginner, and 100% of the time if black is above 200 ELO. Black can just carry out a counterattack and gain a solid advantage. one mistake on your part and decent play on theirs sends you cascading into a complete catastrophe of a position with black completely dominating.

I like to deprive the queen’s movement as much as I can. That’s why I play Nh3 but think so I will have to play g6 later on.

And also even if the queen moves it will allow me to take that one bishop for free.

The wayward queen attack is popular because it allows people with only minimal chess understanding  to score quick checkmates or material advantages against other people with only minimal chess and understanding. It honestly isn't an objectively bad opening for white, even if black responds correctly to all the early traps and tricks it's still a pretty even game. But in practice what generally happens is that once white is unable to gain an advantage of the early tricks, he realizes that he will have to play fundamental chess to win, developing the rest of the pieces, not hanging their own pieces, thinking about not what only he should do but what his opponent might do, etc. And let's be honest, most beginners who play the wayward queen attack are more about quick wins with relatively little effort than learning and fine tuning chess fundamentals, so they mess up once the quick and easy paths are shut down. And because those mistakes frequently involve white's queen in some fashion, white can be losing pretty quick. But I think that is also important to point out it isn't the opening that is bad (although it may be philosophically bad because you can stunt your own growth by using it), it is the player playing it that may or may not be bad

I still see the wayward queen; it's such a lazy opening. I am now seeing a new variation where they play c3 to stop the knight attacking the retreating queen. They all play the same moves and barely know what to do when their initial attack fails.

Your bishop is misplaced on d6, and your knight is misplaced on h6. White is already much better after move 3.

I also go for Nh6, in the following position IIRC there is only 2 moves that work and all other are almost instantly losing or kinda bad.

The Wayward Queen Attack is probably one of the worst openings you could play, it wastes development and overall ruins chess for beginners. I don't know what is going on in the chats but the Wayward Queen Attack is not a good opening period.

I argue Napoleon is worse

The "correct" response to 2...Qh5 is this:

- Nc6

- 3...Bc4 g6

- 4...Qe3 Nf6

The scholar's mate is no longer viable, and you can bully the queen around by simply developing, winning tempo after tempo. You might very well get the queen if your opponent plays wrong, which isn't uncommon...because most people who play this opening are idiots.

There is no "best" opening, but there are certainly candidates for the "worst" ones, and the Wayward Queen is arguably right at the top. It only works on noobs, and is only used by noobs. When said noobs inevitably reach the level of chess competence where this cavalier attack pattern doesn't work on anybody anymore, it short-circuits their brains.

There are only three things the Wayward Queen is good for:

1. Curb-stomping noobs,

2. Teaching you that it's bad to bring out the queen ASAP, and

3. Encouraging you to find better openings when it inevitably doesn't work anymore.

Nothing else.

have seen hikaru playing wayward before, he is ofcourse a master and could manage to play a balanced continuation, still i dont see why ppl keep playing this, not a good way to develop your pieces.. anyone still buying this in 2024?