Scandi defensive is bad

LOL... your funny!

The Scandinavian is perfectly playable.

LLOL

Actually it is quite good.

I'd say it's nuanced. I have played both the 2...,Qxd5 and the 2...,Nf6 variations of the Centre Counter (yes, I'm old enough to call it that) with success. Mainly pre-1995, I admit. It became harder to find planless opponents to bamboozle after game 14 of the Kasparov-Anand World Championship* match. I find it quite awkward to play against as White. But objectively neither version seems especially ace and I'm starting to score rather well against it. As H. L. Mencken so sagely put it, "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong".

*This is neither the time nor the place to get into the legitimacy of titles in the "split World Championship years", I use the term merely for convenience and no opinion one way or the other should be read into that usage.

I never learned the Scandi theory in depth or took it too seriously until recently. A few days ago I did a deep dive into it and picked out some lines...

Overall impressions... black can get a good game if white doesn't know the theory too well. But white has some very powerful and excellent ways of responding. The biggest challenge the Scandi poses is the burden of having to learn to refute it. It's a big opening, it can result in complex dynamic positions, and the theory goes pretty deep... black gets to play it every other game, white will play it very rarely... But if white really buckles down and learns the theory he will get great positions, it objectively is dubious. It's kind of up to white how good or dubious the Scandi will be for him to face.

The opening forum is full of low rated people- and in this case, most likely a troll, claiming that certain openings are trash.

For all the people that are actually questioning the solidity of the scandinavian, dont. It is a perfectly solid opening. However, if black plays it the objective way, it tend to be quite passive. To prove the solidity of the scandinavian we can look at Magnus himself who played the Qa5, Qd6 and Qd8 variations in longer GM games, and never lost a single game in the longer time periods.

If anybody is thinking about trying the scandinavian I would recommend the Qd8 variation (fun fact: it is the oldest opening in recorded chess history). Some people may believe that black is wasting moves - this could not be further from the truth. I would claim that black is actually gaining moves by playing this variation! To demonstrate how, I would like to show the main-line of the Qa5 variation (the most common one):

Here we see that the Queen ends op on d8 anyways, and it simply became a target for white´s pieces. Thus, we are playing the Qa5 variation up a tempo! This is how (in my opinion) we gain our first tempo playing the Qd8 variation.

I would also argue that we gain a tempo simply by playing ANY Qxd5 scandinavians. Here is my demonstration how:

This is the main-line of the Qd8 scandinavian defence. And what is white´s best move? Either Ne4 or Ne2 - followed by c4 aiming for a d5 break. The point being that when white have a positional position against the caro-kann pawn structure he needs to play c4. But in the scandinavian, he has blocked the c-pawn and need to spend an extra move to play it. This is our second tempo gained from playing the Qd8 scandinavian, which I think should be considered a serious candidate for a defence against e4.

Magnus has beaten former world champions such as Kramnik with moves like 1. a3... there are human reasons he plays the move, but nonetheless 1. a3 is not an objectively good move.

I'm willing to play dubious openings, but I have no desire nor need to delude myself into believing they aren't dubious. And black is not saving a tempo by playing Qxd5, that is nonsense, no one believes that - Nc3 would only be a tempo loss if Nc3, Ne2 / Ne4 were completely useless, but the knight is active, controls square and can participate in attacks in many lines... and rotating the knight to the kingside is a common developing move in many kings pawn openings such as the italian / ruy lopez. So your argument is just nonsense.

This is not a fair comparison. Magnus plays a3 in blitz games for fun online against lower rated grandmasters. Sure we can all have a laugh when it works, but it cannot possibly be compared to playing the scandinavian in serious classical games against top grandmasters (Fabiano Caruana for example - and winning).

I am open to other opinions however, but to say that nobody believes that black is gaining tempos in the Qd8 scandinavian compared to other variations is just wrong. I am not alone about this, for example - GM Karsten Muller in the book "The 3...Qd8 scandinavian: Simple and strong" claims the same thing as I did in my last comment. However, if you have different opinion than me and Karsten Muller, I would like to know why you think so, and how you would respond to my previous arguments.

He beat kramnik, former world champion, with 1... a6 in a "titled tuesday" game here: Carlsen Disrespects Kramnik HARD In First Titled Tuesday Of 2024 (youtube.com)

I'm not comparing the variations I'm addressing your claim that Nc3 is actually a tempo loss. This claim is nonsense:

"I would also argue that we gain a tempo simply by playing ANY Qxd5 scandinavians. "

I think this is the beauty of chess, how the same position can be viewed so differently by different minds.

I agree that Qxd5 Nc3 is a tempo loss for black, but the tempos are gained back for the reasons I mentioned. I saw that you edited your comment since my response, but we can examine the moves Ne4 / Ne2 further.

In other similar positions against the caro kann / slav pawn structure, white almost always have the most optimal setup: pawns on d4 and c4 + a knight on c3. Here white have a choice if he want to go for a d5 break or play on the kingside depending on what black plays.

In the main variation of the Qd8 line, black is aiming for an ultra-solid position where some pieces have been traded off and most of his pieces are aimed towards the kingside. This does indeed make the move Ne4 look weird since we never see lightning on a clear sky. The amount of kingside-peices are almost equal, white simply does not have a big enough kingside piece advantage to launch a deadly kingside attack from the main-line position I gave you earlier. I simply do not believe it. To proove this further, I will give you the following moves from the Main-Line positon - 11. Ne2 O-O 12. c4 Re8. Consider this position, what would you play? My engine recommends the move Nc3 (+0.3) with the idea of countering e5 with d5. If this is the best move for white, he has for certain lost tempos in the opening.

But this is not to say that black is better or even equal. Gaining tempos in a passive positional position is worth less than gaining tempos in the Tal variation of Karo kann for example. I sitll would give a slight edge to white, but the advantage is very abstract and extremely hard to take exploit.

EDIT: I saw you edited your post again, and for the second time, titled tuesday cannot be compared to classical OTB games.

I think the OP's name says it all: Absolute Fish......

I've played the Center Counter (the Scandinavian) now for about 2 decades.

Play both the Andersson 3...Qa5 and the Melt's 3...Qd6.

Dubious? DEFINE dubious.

There is a development issue with Black, that if he/she doesn't know how to handle it, White can get an advantage in several lines. (Is that what we are defining as dubious?) I'LL Buy that...

however...

If Black knows how to handle the various short falls in these lines ... White's advantage is no better than other much more popular defenses. (I DON'T KNOW of any line that refutes the Center Counter, if someone has one....please share.

LOOKING at the glass half full ...

A Scandinavian player will play the defense way more than his opponents, White can not prevent Black from playing the defense (unlike a few more popular defense) so the Center Counter neopyte should get more familiar with the resulting positions.

I personally look at the early Queen deployment like a fishing lure. Kind of baits White into playing positions unique to the Scandinavian. EXAMPLE.. in the Andersson var i.e 3...Qa5. What could be consider one of the main lines 8. Nd5 or Ne4 with the discovered attack on the Queen by the Bishop at d2... this line leads to Black doubling the pawns on the f file. LEADS to a very aggresive scheme by Black if White castles KINGSIDE. (Very familiar to the Bronstien-Larson var in the Caro-Kann)

MisterOakwood,

In the line you gave 1 e4 d5 2 exd5 Qxd5 3 Nc3 Qa5 4 d4 Nf6 5 Bc4, you played 5...Bf5 and 6...c6. My repertoire book published in 2021 uses 5...Bg4 here. The author says that in the past black's automatic response to almost every white setup, including 5 Bc4, used to be 5...Bf5 and 6...c6, or 5...c6 and 6...Bf5.

He says those moves failed to address white's aggressive plan involving Ng1-e2-g3, kingside castling and a swift f2-f4-f5. It's a repertoire book and in this line the author prefers 5...Bg4.

It's true that after 5...Bg4 white has 6 f3 but black is saving a tempo by omitting ....c6 for queenside castling. The author notes that it matters white has been provoked to play f3 weakening the dark squares.

I will admit I haven't studied it enough yet to really understand what's the big deal provoking f3 if white had intended f2 to f4 anyway, but I do like playing ....0-0-0 quickly instead of ...c6. At a glance I'm not all that sure my king is as safe on the queenside as I would like though, but of course black often castles queenside in the Scandinavian and hopes for the best.

I've got much to learn in understanding the Scandinavian really well but wanted to point out that the author considers the line you gave for black to be somewhat outdated.

When they're blitz games played by two world champions they're of a quality that matches the rapid games of lower rated GMs... they'll have 2800+ accuracy ratings at the end of these games. Besides, Magnus does this sort of thing all the time, it's what he's known for. And chess in general has moved alot more in the direction of playing offbeat moves simply because the theoretical lines are so well known nowdays they're very drawish at top level. This problem with draws exists in classical games as well.

Club players and online players don't have problems with draws though...

And I wouldn't argue that the Scandinavian is as bad as 1. a3 or 1... a6 on the first move, it's much better than that. However... in general the Scandinavian is better choice in blitz than it is in classical. The reason for this is very simple - one of the biggest upsides of the Scandi is it imposes an unfamiliar position onto the opponent, that works better in blitz. That doesn't make the Scandi position unplayable in longer time formats - very few things are actually unplayable in chess... and I'd wager you can find instances of top players playing every opening in a classical game and winning, there are tens of thousands of high level games available... 

But I don't think anyone really believes the Scandi is an ideal long time format opening - we have no idea why Fabi chose to go with the Scandi in that scenario - if I had to guess I'd say he probably had some specific reason for it, like he needed a win as black... in tournament settings there are all kinds of scenarios that can arise which justify these sorts of decisions, you would never from the outside just point to a game and make some broad statement like "hey look, the Scandi should be played in classical games!"

None of this is really an argument for your case. Citing one random game gives us no reason to ignore what we know about the Scandi... that black is down in tempo, and we can see this in the engine eval. That the main thing it has going for it is the rare positions which arise and the advantage in experience / theory black is liable to have.. not something related to its objective strength. 

I don't believe I've suggested anywhere that the Scandi should be losing by force.

If you want to discuss a specific position you'll have to show it using the embedded board.

In playing the Scandi you acknowledge that there are factors in a position which matter much more than engine eval. However you haven't afforded the same courtesy to white in your analysis - you're just looking at some engine line and a seemingly arbitrary knight maneuver. Engines do scuttling like this for obscure reasons in many lines as the board grows in complexity, it's always difficult to figure out why they're doing it. As white I would probably avoid a line which demands that level of precision. Fortunately in the Scandi (and in the Qd8 variant in particular) I have alot more freedom to deviate because I have so much larger of an engine edge to work with.

In general I sort of treat whatever engine edge I do have as points in the bank where I can deviate, for one reason or another, without worrying about the consequences. As white I like to remain at least equal... as black I don't like to go below -0.3 (at least by leelas analysis)... but other than that I'm willing to play most things.

There are simply lines against all variants of the Scandi where white is active, the engine also likes, and which are scoring well in practice.

The other thing I'll say is I find these opening theoretical debates about abstract ideas such as whether whites Nc3 tempo is useful or not useful to be very speculative / somewhat meaningless. It's impossible to fully characterize the effect a move has in an opening over time throughout the entire move tree. If you want some objective measure of the consequence of blacks first move.. the engine eval is the closest thing we have to that. For a birds-eye view you could also consider how black is performing in a given line... Beyond that it's better to just look at the actual positions that arise.

I like the scandi. I think the reason it is not played because it is very passive for black compared to other defences.

You are absolutely correct OP!

I have given you an upvote.

I can tell your going to go far in chess.

Rooting out the Good Opening in Chess vs. Bad Opening in Chess is 1st step in getting better!

it is quite telling that even the qd8 scandinavian is "only" a 0.7 at like depth 50 with the most recent stockfish. Even two tempi is insufficient for a huge advantage since nc3 is a bit of a concession blocking the c pawn. Black can play a structure thats quite resistant to pure piece play. White needs pawn thrusts to prove a large advantage which he simply doesnt have

Average opening unless you fall for the icbm