aggressive, tactical and open "system" to deal with hypermoderns?

i DESPISE trench weasel defenses! pirc, modern, nimzowitsch, alekhine, carokann, & french etc. if i don't have targets to plan attacks around, i'm toast. i just played one of the most miserable games of my life yesterday, i think, against a -200 that blocked EVERY attack i tried to start until my pieces were scattered all over and uncoordinated as if a toddler was playing. i swore at ancestors that game!

i'd like to find a solution to my misery, PREFERABLY with a SYSTEM (like the stonewall or KIA) that i can just play by instinct until opportunities present themselves. i hate fianchettos (either side) and closed positions... "big center" formations aren't my style at all. i'm a player who'll sack a minor piece to get even 1 pawn out of the way. the pawns in big centers are fugly to me and i hate empty space where my castle should be.

i've been playing e4/d4/Nf3/Nc3/Bd3/Be3 a bit lately when i don't know what to do against mods for siomplicity and mobility and doing better than expected being a bishops to 4th and 5th ranks kind of player... ESPECIALLY Bc4/Bxf7+/Ne5+ or Ng5+ to break pins and gain bishops or just steal castles and throw pieces at the problem as tactics allow.

i'm positionally stoopid. that's why mods drive me nuts (and lower rated players with weird ideas) and need a repertoire that suits my style. i was studying the 150 attack in around 2000, but i'd prefer a one size fits all system. is there any soundness to knights out and bishops centered? i used to hate bishops on d and e 3 OR 4, but have learned that i'm getting flexibility if not an immediate target to attack with that.

i don't think i'd be a good mod player myself as much as i hated getting forced into the closed french when i'm playing the scandinavian, but an immediate Nf3 is rapid development. with open lines for my bishops, maybe THAT will at least keep my own pawns out of the way and i do like a good counterattack. 

the other day someone mentioned the pirc as good against everything. can it be played by a rabid kamikaze? again, i'm looking for open (pawns on e4 & d4 or traded) type positions, no pawn chaining or fianchettos if possible and lots of double edged tactical opportunity... like i used to get against the sicilian in the smith morra when i knew some theory. i have enough theoretical maze theory i'm trying to learn already. a simple system (grandmaster approved soundness is completely unnecessary... if i could gambit mods, i would)

thanks in advance for any and all feedback. i got nowhere trying to keyword and wiki the problem away today.

look! a tumbleweed!

#1

"i DESPISE trench weasel defenses! pirc, modern, nimzowitsch, alekhine, carokann, & french"
++ Why? You should be glad they play these defences instead of 1...e5 or 1...c5.

"if i don't have targets to plan attacks around, i'm toast."
++ Those defences give you targets. Pirc and modern gives you a space advantage and the fianchetto gives you a target to attack. Nimzovich does not prepare to castle and obstructs the c-pawn. Alekhine gives you a space advantage and lands the natural defender Nf6 on a poor square b6. Caro-Kann obstructs the natural ...Nc6. French shuts in his Bc8.

"PREFERABLY with a SYSTEM (like the stonewall or KIA)"
++ You can play Stonewall and King's Indian Attack as white if you like, but positions are closed.

"i hate fianchettos" ++ Those give you a target to attack.

"closed positions" ++ Then play open positions.

"big center" formations aren't my style at all. ++ Then play a small center.

"i'm a player who'll sack a minor piece to get even 1 pawn out of the way." ++ Do not do that.

"i hate empty space where my castle should be." ++ Then do not play those pawns.

"i've been playing e4/d4/Nf3/Nc3/Bd3/Be3"
++ e4, d4, Nf3, Nc3 is a dream setup. The bishops are less clear.
Bd3/Be3 may be fine, but according to what black does other squares may be better.

"i'd prefer a one size fits all system." ++ You have to adapt to what your opponent plays.

"is there any soundness to knights out and bishops centered?"
++ Knights first is sound. Good squares for the bishops depend on what your opponent plays.

"someone mentioned the pirc as good against everything." ++ You can play ..g6 and ...Bg7 against everything and open g3 and Bg2 as white, but you give up space.

"i'm looking for open (pawns on e4 & d4 or traded) type positions"
++ Then fianchetto is not for you.

"no pawn chaining" ++ You are not forced to chain. Instead of advancing you can keep the tension or you can exchange.

The French a weasel defense?????   Pa-leez!  It is the second most aggressive response to 1.e4.

Suck it up buttercup!  You cannot always force a game into one style.  No matter what you play or what color you are, positions of other types will always abound based on what your opponent plays.

For example, take the French.  You claim the French always leads to blocked positions.  That is because if both sides play the best moves, it will wind up blocked.

That does not mean a French player, like myself, will always get a blocked position.

The best move is 3.Nc3, and after 3...Bb4, the best move is 4.e5 and the center is blocked.

But what stops White from playing inferior moves like 3.exd5?  There will now be an open e-file, but White has nothing and Black has fully equalized already.  He must know what he is doing.

I have 1 loss over the board since 2014 in the French Exchange (in about 40 to 50 games) with a roughly even split between draws and wins.  I may like the Closed position, but I surely will not bellyache and whine about White playing the exchange.

You must do the same with your 1.e4 as White.  Suck it up and learn how to fight the Modern and Pirc and Caro-Kann, not bi*ch about it!

In fact, if you are OK with the Saemisch King's Indian and Old Indian as White, you can avoid the Pirc all together.

1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.f3 g6 (3...e5 4.d5 Be7 5.c4 - Old Indian) 4.c4 Bg7 5.Nc3 - Saemisch King's Indian.

Grow a backbone or take up tic tac toe instead.

Against the French I have been attempting to learn the Réti Gambit (I think it's called something different on chess.com but involves: 1. e4 e6 2. b3 d5 3. Bb2). It seems like a nice way to dodge the mainline theory and gambit the pawn on e4 for easy development and various attacking opportunities (it won't be a walk in the park for black to hold on to the pawn on e5 either, as after 3... dxe4, white can play 4. Nc3).    

You can play the French in an open way.
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1144358 

Sounds like the English may be something for you.
- It works against all systems
- It requires only some basic moves in the opening

- It's easy to open up the center with d4

- Lots of tactics

- It's one of the most popular SuperGM openings at the moment

QUOTE:

"i DESPISE trench weasel defenses! pirc, modern, nimzowitsch, alekhine, carokann, & french"
++ Why? You should be glad they play these defences instead of 1...e5 or 1...c5.

I love 1...e5! i'm 56:40 in my king's gambit games and that's without any recent study... just looking for tactics. i used to be something like 90% in the smith morra, but not lately. i still like that as it's more tactical. when denied targets to attack, i implode. i'm sick and tired of tripping over my pieces in hypermods and closed games. i'm a tactician. deny me tactics, and i'm an idiot.

QUOTE: then just play open positions

that's my point! i'm looking for an open tactical repertoire. the effing stonewall is driving me soooo nuts it might make me quit playing AGAIN as it and that annoying effing scandinavian advance sucked all the fun out of my play. i am NOT having much fun in chess playing 3 variations i despise before i can get to a king's gambit, BDG, or icelandic etc.

no more stonewalling! i wanted to learn the albin, but i need a repertoire. benko is supposed to be good, but i don't like fianchettos and the QS is sooo ugly in it too.

i just want an open center i can get my pieces mobile in. i have no idea how to get to it, and googling has done nothing to help me plan a new repertoire.

QUOTE: The French a weasel defense?????

to me, yes it is. "COME OUT AND FIGHT YOU CHICKEN SH## MOTHERF###ER!" is what i say every time a weasel trips me up trying to find ANYTHING to attack, but just getting my pieces on worse and worse squares. you just don't know how much positional concepts i'll never understand frustrate me.

1. d4 d5 2. e3 i've only won 15% of my games here and stonewalling used to be easy for me

1.e4 d6? i only win 30% of those

i'm doing only 28% in smith morra too which is messing with my head. i'm doing something wrong in the opening... probably trying to play the same Qe2 setup every time

as to the french? i'm kicking butt by instinct only in the monte carlo. i've finally found my "smith morra" or the french there

1.e4 e6 2.d4

2...d5 52.6%!

2...c5 14.3%

2...d6 37%

the hypermoderns are my natural enemy

QUOTE: You must do the same with your 1.e4 as White.  Suck it up and learn how to fight the Modern and Pirc and Caro-Kann, not bi*ch about it!

you aren't listening!  that's precisely what i'm trying to do here! i'm trying to find lines that work like the ones i'm playing don't. i have no idea what to look into though. there's no sources that help a gambiteer build a repertoire. 

of course there are lines in almost every opening that are annoying. if i can't find a solution to this problem, i'm going to quit playing chess AGAIN because there's no fun in pulling my hair in positional hell after positional hell. i refuse to accept that one MUST playpassively against hypermoderns and in closed positions. there has to be kamikaze lines, like maybe the 150 attack.

don't know why you're recommending king's indian. i told you i despise fianchettos. i've lost just about every game i've tried to use them. otherwise, yeah, i could play them literally against everything

i don't know about the english. i've always thought of it as a positional system. i know the 1700+ player i used to see at a chess club hated my tactical style as much as i hated his quiet one.

i'll look into it though and see if maybe there's something in it that'll work for me. i used to have a really great english book too i bought trying to find an ANTI-english gambit in. i was trying to study the vector gambit i think, but it wasn't covered.

did you mean play it as white? no way am i giving king's gambit up ever! it's about the only thing i have any fun in, though i'm getting the hang of the BDG and am a monte carlo natural

Just develop your pieces and you will be fine. Take the center when it’s possible and you can’t do too bad from there. There are free chessable courses on 1.e4 so check them out to get ideas of how to play against these openings and use what you like

#8

"I love 1...e5! i'm 56:40 in my king's gambit games and that's without any recent study... just looking for tactics. i used to be something like 90% in the smith morra, but not lately. i still like that as it's more tactical. when denied targets to attack, i implode. i'm sick and tired of tripping over my pieces in hypermods and closed games. i'm a tactician. deny me tactics, and i'm an idiot."
++ In the French you get tactics as your pawn e5 denies the natural defender Nf6. also his Bc8 is out of play. You can play the Millner-Barry gambit 1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 e5 c5 4 c3 Nc6 5 Nf3 Qb6 6 Bd3 cxd4 7 O-O
In the Caro-Kann you get tactics because his pawn c6 impedes his own natural defensive move ...Nc6. The Advance Variation 1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 e5 gets tactical. Also the Panov-Botvinnik Attack 1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 exd5 cxd5 4 c4 is sharp. Also the Fantasy Variation 1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 f3 is sharp.
In the Pirc and the Modern you get tactics as ...g6 is weakening and you can attack with h2-h4-h5 or f2-f4-f5 or trade Bg7 with Be3, Qd2, Bh6 to exploit the weaknesses.
In the Alekhine you get an attack because you chase his natural defender Nf6 to the poor square Nb6.

"the effing stonewall is driving me soooo nuts" ++ If you open 1 e4, then there is no Stonewall. On 1 f4 you can play Fromm's Gambit 1...e5. It is not sound, but sharp tactical.

"that annoying effing scandinavian advance sucked all the fun out of my play"
++ 1 e4 d5 2 e5? c5 gives black no problems

"i wanted to learn the albin"
++ Albin 1 d4 d5 2 c4 e5 is not sound, but tactical. However, if white plays 2 Nf3 first, then it does not happen. The same with the Budapest Gambit: 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e5, but it does not happen if white plays 2 Nf3. Maybe Benoni is something for you: 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5

"benko is supposed to be good" ++ Benkö is one of the sounder gambits

"i don't like fianchettos"
++ Great attacking players like Tal, Fischer, and Kasparov liked fianchettos.
The fianchetto bishop often deals the decisive blow in sharp attacks.

"the english. i've always thought of it as a positional system" ++ Yes, that is right

1. Unless you are Mikhail Tal, you're not always going to get positions that you like. You might just want to learn to play closed positions. That would facilitate things like long-term improvement at chess, if that's what you want.

2. No system is going to lead to the kind of positions you want against everything unless you want to play closed/semi-closed stuff with the white pieces.

3. So, develop a different way to play each opening. Maybe against the French you want to play the advanced, bolster d4 like nuts, and then push f4-f5 to attack on the kingside. Maybe you want to play the Fingerslip Gambit (which is objectively dubious if not busted, but I don't think objective evaluations of complex openings with long variations matters at 1200).

4. Everything gives you a target if you know where to look. For example, in the apparently quiet QGD, white frequently has the famous "minority attack." You just need to make the advantages of your position crushingly good while making theirs moot. Technically, that's positional chess, but the best tacticians also had scary position skills (e.g. Morphy, Kasparov, Ivanchuk).

QUOTE: 1 e4 d5 2 e5? c5 gives black no problems

that's what that stupid grandmaster said in my orange chess book i was looking for theory for. getting stuck behind my pawns with the 3...Bf5 system as recommended by the book drove me so nuts that it was the reason why i totally quit playing chess about 10 years ago. i could no longer endure the torment of being stuck behind pawns in that and the stonewall. 

you can't really apply "one size fits all" grandmaster quotes to every situation. i HATE grandmaster foofy wussy positional crap. i'm a gambiteer. if an opening is positional. i'm going to lose. that's all there is to it. hence my looking for a tactical system. ANY tactical system. 

i think i'm going to quit chess again over this crap the same way i quit poker (i'm a texas hold 'em grandmaster!) because of that cheating butt river rat math. you can NEVER hit ANYTHING on the flop with AK suited and grind. i made a round 2 final table after placing 57th of 9000 and taking a dive from 17th trying to win for bragging rights when i already had my ticket. made it to the final table, drew AA, board flops AJJ... full house, aces over jacks. idiot with JJJArags draws me all in. no brainer call, but i KNEW i was going to get cheated and grabbed my camera (didn't know how to screen gran yet) in time to see the idiot KO me with a 1:52 jack on the river. you shouldn't be able to predict that.

i could not get through a single pawn ending chapter in any of my 3 chess books. i can't do abstraction. positional is invisible abstract mumbo jumbo to me. i need targets.

i just quit a game today after 1.e4 c6. a rated game. you have no idea of my suffering here. there is only actual fun in maybe 1 game in 8, if that these days. that's not enough. it's not worth the stress that's throwing the games i actually want to play too.

my NON hypermodern white repertoire:

king's gambit

scandinavian - blackmar diemer gambit

smith morra gambit

monte carlo gambit

krejcik alekhine (not the most sound, but i like robbing castles and chasing kings)

i like playing these lines. i'm looking into a carokann system. i see it so rare, it's low priority, but the stats for the cave man attack are only =. i wanted to play that as most lines are losing for black at stockfish's level. there's only one line that wasn't the main line where black could get equal, but in real world games, it's merely =.

i was HOPING there's some system like big center openings, but development based.

"just develop your pieces" is lousy advice! developing my pieces is what gets me into trouble trying to find something to attack besides empty air. that's what positional concepts are to me... ether

You could give this kind of system a try. It's quite aggressive, and usually black has to go into an endgame if he wants to be comfortable.

play hypermodern with hypermodern? like as in fire with fire?

Have you tried the Accelerated Panov against c6? It's quite aggressive and the position will open up fairly quick, if not immediately. It may not be a "system" but many of the moves are quite instinctive. The Panov-Botvinnik is also a solution, as tygxc suggested, but it's slightly slower. 

#12

"that's what that stupid grandmaster said" ++ Maybe that grandmaster is not stupid...

"drove me so nuts that it was the reason why i totally quit playing chess about 10 years ago"
++ So you quit for getting good positions

"you can't really apply "one size fits all" grandmaster quotes to every situation."
++ The grandmaster is usually right.

"i HATE grandmaster foofy wussy positional crap." ++ Maybe wrongfully

"i'm a gambiteer." ++ OK, to each his own

"if an opening is positional. i'm going to lose."
++ You never lose because of the opening, you lose because you make tactical mistakes

"i could not get through a single pawn ending chapter in any of my 3 chess books"
++ Chess is a game. It is meant to be fun. If you have no fun studying endings, then do not.

"i just quit a game today after 1.e4 c6. a rated game. you have no idea of my suffering here."
++ It is usually black who suffers after 1 e4 c6

"i like playing these lines. i'm looking into a carokann system. i see it so rare, it's low priority"
++ That is right: if you open 1 e4, then you will see 1...e5 and 1...c5 and even 1...e6 more often.

"but the stats for the cave man attack are only ="++ The Cave Man Attack 1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 e5 Bf5 4 h4 may fit your style. You may also like the Hillbilly Attack 1 e4 c6 2 Bc4 d5 3 Bb3

""just develop your pieces" is lousy advice!" ++ It is good advice, but you do not value it

"developing my pieces is what gets me into trouble"
++ developing pieces and play for the center keeps you out of trouble

"trying to find something to attack"
++ Look at your opponent's moves and what weaknesses he creates for you to attack.

That may be the case, but the position is still quite open after 4...Nf6 5. Nf3 Nxd5 6. d4.

Every position hides its own hopes, dreams and aspirations. The best way to improve is not to try to find one system for every option black has but to try to understand the specifics of the positions you face. I know that can feel incoherent. One way to do that that feels coherent is to pick a player past or present whose style you like, get their book of annotated games, mimic their opening selection and learn the MG ideas of the opening by playing thru their games.

#21
"objectively white is playing for the minimally brighter side of a draw"
++ That is true for all chess.