Why does 3...Qa5 in the Smith-Morra have a high win rate but remain rarely played?

Opening Name: B21 Sicilian Defense: Smith-Morra Gambit Declined
Opening Moves: 1. e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4 3. c3

Hi everyone,
In this recent game I played: https://www.chess.com/game/live/139684029676 , I came across an unusual defensive response to the Smith-Morra Gambit — the move 3...Qa5

According to various statistics from sources like Lichess player data, master-level games, and other open databases, this move is extremely rare (with an almost 0% play rate), yet surprisingly effective: Black scores over 50% win rate with it, which is notably higher than the more commonly played alternatives that often fall below that mark

I'm really curious to learn more:
► What is the strategic idea behind 3...Qa5 for Black?
► What are the typical follow-up plans, and how should Black develop their pieces to capitalize on this move?

Looking forward to hearing thoughts and insights from experienced players or anyone who has experimented with this line. Thanks in advance!

Idk I have no idea

nah bro 🥀

What?

Yeah idk either

do research urself lol using stockfish

Nah bro, of course I use Stockfish for analysis too, but what I’m asking here is about the plans and main ideas behind it. Sometimes Stockfish doesn’t help me understand the concepts as clearly as a human explanation would

ask ChatGPT 

Maybe it's like fried liver attack, deadly when opponents don't know but weak when the opponents know. Note : I'm pulling it from my ass, so take it with a grain of salt because it is probably wrong.

The idea of 3...Qa5 is to delay the rapid development of the white pieces by pinning the c-pawn, or provoking the development of some white piece to an uncomfortable square. The price to pay is wasting time with your Queen.

It's an OK move for anyone that wants to divert from 3...dxc3 or 3...Nf6, and should give a double-edged game. Esserman in his Mayhem book gives as best 4.Bd2 (which is the engine's choice, by a tiny margin) claiming a large white advantage, but his analysis is a shallow single line. Won't give the line due to copyright reasons, and in any case it isn't worth more than your own analysis- rather the opposite.

n

Yeah, it's true that bad openings like the Englund Gambit can be effective at lower levels, and the move Qd5 also seems like a bad move due to early queen development. But keep in mind, the game data I analyzed was filtered to include only high-level games — and it still shows a surprisingly high win rate for Black

It's surprising to see such a rare line mentioned in a book — definitely something worth studying. Is this the book you were referring to?

This is the Chessable course which came a few years after the book. I don't own the course, so I cannot tell if it's contents are identical to the book.

You can get the pawn back after 4.b4, but you will get a fixed center structure, which isn't really what a Morra player is going for.

Stockfish and humans approach the exact same problem differently; saying stockfish does "X" is often meaningless because that's not how a human would approach the problem. I'm a class-level player, I see the Qa5 move occasionally, and it doesn't affect the outcome of the game, black still loses. Even if a human player matches stockfish's moves a few times, they'll still botch the game a few moves further along, because they are a human, not stockfish. Stockfish should be taken with a grain of salt.

To be honest, I have not put any serious work on 3...Qa5 (I don't play the Morra as White), but IF I ever met it OTB, I would simply forget about breaking the pin (as Esserman does with 4.Bd2) and proceed with 4.Nf3, Bc4, 0-0 etc.

It is not such a simple thing, as in some cases Bc4 may not be the optimal move, but anyway- such subtleties are not significant in actual play.

I guess the disrupting 4...Nf6! is the best answer to 4.Nf3, when we get something like this:

A computer evaluates this as flat equal, but we care about practical play, and there white's position is a wee bit easier to play.