You mean a3, a6, h3, h6. Your goal in the opening is to develop your pieces and control the center--this does neither. Black will likely fianchetto his queen's bishop rather than playing Bg4 or Bf5 and now the h-pawn is looking rather silly. White's other hope of making h3 look useful is an eventual kingside expansion, which probably means castling queenside.
White's other boo boo was playing Nc3 before c4. Black has great winning chances.
I just popped this position into the chess365 opening explorer. White wins 34.8% of the time, draw 4.3% of the time, and loses 60.9% of the time. What a great illustration of how deep a hole he's already dug in three moves!
Then again, an early a3/a6/h3/h6 avoids opening theory. An interesting game between Karpov and Tony Miles began 1.e4 a6?!:
the only reason to play h6 or h3, Is when Bg4 or Bg5 causes you some sort of problem, I took me awhile before I understood when to play h3 and when not to. Here's a game of mine were my opponent shouldn't have played h3.
I have a question about a bit of opening theory, not for any specific opening, but a general situation. I've encountered several times (playing live chess) a situation in something like this:
Now, this kind of pawn advance could happen in any number of openings, and at later or earlier points, but the idea is the same. I have found this to be a rather irritating move (i.e. sometimes hard to deal with), but in recent chess annotations of a few top-level games, I've seen such a move described as "unnecessary."
Could someone explain to me why it would be deemed as such, and what would be the proper way to deal with such a...defence, if you will.
Thanks