The Grob's Attack, and Why We Don't Play it More???

"Chess is played by people and people make mistakes.Luckily, otherwise all games ended with a draw ."

lol i know that, but its just too loosening an open, im not a grandmaster or anything, but even i can see that, if you play sensible, then you'll give white loads of grief for being as adveturous

and be aggressive about it as well

on chessgames.com grob has 56.4% win rate and 21% draw, percentage wise it is good. But a theory that I had is that people would only play this against extremely bad opponents, and therefore not many people have played it and when people do, they win.

graham burgess said a few year back that he wouldnt recommend the opening to anyone, but its worth taking note of incase someone plays it against you

To answer the original question why don't we play it more.  It sometimes works as a surprise opening, but if our opponent is prepared for it we are in deep trouble.  I played the Grob once in my  life.  I was playing casual games at a club and had just upset a player with a much higher rating.  I could see it in his eyes that he was "steaming".   I played the Grob because I was certain that he would overact.  It worked and I won.    He calmed down congratulated me and then proceeded to roll me with solid chess the next game.

The Grob is a woodpusher's opening, as evidenced by the fact that *I* play it almost exclusively as White. What could be a worse condemnation? 

@ Estragon, let's play then, i tried to play with you but you are not available for challenges, i play white and i promise to openup with Grob...

Ooh, 2442 vs 1641!...

Its a deadly attack for those not prepared.  besides it takes joe blow out of the bookmoves. Lets Play !

I dont like moves like 1. g4 or b4, they are not good openings. When you are playing white, you have the initiative, and you should use it out. When you play dobious moves like g4, b4, that allows black to have an even better game. 1. g3 or b3 is good, but g4 and b4 are not. Ok, you can build moves like b4 and g4 into your position later, but you can play them anytime if you need a king/Queenside attack, so you should not play them as first moves. But in a low level tournament (1400-1500 and below for example) you can play it, it will be a surprise for your opponents, they will know nothing about these openings. But I dont know them as well, but I would play it out easily, but if there are some traps in there, then you might play it once or twice during a tournament to be surprise, but you should play normal openings.

The Grob has been refuted.

The simplest line is 3. c6, and the other one involves a rook sacrifice.

Line A:

Line B:

White scores poorly in both lines.

I used this opening a couple of time and I had my share of wins. I like also playing it with black, (Borg defense, also called Basman defense) 1- e4 - g5  2-d4 - Bg7. That's about the same lines. I often draw and even win a little with black...

Grob's okay for learning the tactical patterns that can come about with a g2 bishop, a c4 pawn, and a b3 and/or a4 Queen, if black plays incorrectly.

But, just speaking as a 2000+ player who has faced the Grob many times, I generally consider it an automatic loss for white if black knows what he's doing.

What to do for black vs this? 

Oh yeah thanks I was wondering about that

grob's attack is one of a number of dubious openings i use because i enjoy having to solve the difficulties they create.

white is not automatically lost unless he tries to win on the white squares with that gambit.

basman showed one way to play it positionally; i would like to see others (e.g. that 2.e3 variation). what is not automatically obvious about irregular openings is that, provided one has defensive knowledge & a bit of luck, even better players will not be able to overrun your weird set-up unless a blunder occurs; meanwhile, there are opportunities for the other player to misunderstand what's going on, due to lack of experience against nonstandard things...

How have you had your share of wins? Anyone familiar with this opening would crush you without trying. All black has to do is play c6 and your entire gambit is pointless.