Whats the sense of the Portuguese opening?

Nothing against my country, but what's the sense of this opening?

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Nobody ACTUALLY plays it, It is just a troll

i know, but if it is named it should have been played. With which sense?

Probably the only reason I can imagine is that it leaves options open to play f4. But that in itself is just as dubious a move as 2. Bb5 is.

I think that's the main line?

hmmmm... I didn't thought about Ba4. thanks

I think the point is that maybe you can go d3 and f4 instead of Nf3. But yeah, a bit of nothingness really black has a pretty free hand. Here is a miniature where it went badly wrong for white. 

According to my database of chess games I (eu, me, moi, je, ich) played it 2266 times.

Did you ever hear talking about the "spanish bishop" in the b5 square after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5?

So now you know the "portuguese bishop" arrived there first, after 1.e4 e5 2.Bb5!

Portuguese Gambit, idk how you play this though

1.e4 e5 2.Bb5 Nf6 3.d4

Gambito Portuense / Oporto Gambit / Portuguese Gambit

Someone needs to arrest and interrogate any GM who plays this opening on why they played it, it's a matter of public sanity. 

There are some. I will not tell you who, so you can't call the sheriff.

But there is no knight toput pressure on

Bishops almost never travel mounted on horses. They go on carriage.

Before I begin with what I am going to say: A disclaimer.

I do NOT have any sort of significant opinion that I wish to share on the soundness and or playability of the openings I am about to comment on.

To answer your question, what the sense of the opening? The short answer is, I don’t know.

But I can make somewhat of an educated guess based upon what I do know about another opening.

When I first started to play chess, I was really taken by the immense amount of theory on the game and its vast historical legacy. One opening I used to come across a lot was the Ruy Lopez and I always played either the Breyer or the Open as Black. But I was always puzzled by what was the point of 3…a6 Morphy’s defence? After all, you were either encouraging White to take on c6 or have it with draw to a4 and most of the mountains of theory on the Spanish cantered on these 2 moves.

I then began looking at older systems where I thought (at least) where the tempo used on playing 3…a6 could be put to better use. I tried them all, Bird’s 3…Nd4, Scheilmann’s 3…f5, the Berlin 3…Nf6, yada yada….

I eventually settled on 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Bb4!? Alapin’s Defence. In blitz and rapid it is a great time muncher but in standard and correspondence it has significant flaws. I did manage to catch a few out but once played and prepared for, not so much.

The relevance to your question is this Alapin suggested in an 1898 article that his reasoning behind playing 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Bb4!? Was that he noticed that under certain circumstances the Bishop was better placed on the a5 square then on the b6 square (after using the move order 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Bc5). Thus maybe whoever came up with 1.e4 e5 2.Bb5 had the same idea but in reverse (with a4 and b3).

Finally, there was a very good Italian website which carried database version of varying books old and new that had been down for quite a while now (understandably probably fell afoul of international copy right issues). That site had a copy of a database of the book 1983 “Portuguese opening” by Ferreira & Sampaio, a patient google search might turn it up.

Regards

My version of the book is Portuguese and dated 1990:

Sampaio, Pedro, & Ferreira, António (1990). A Abertura Portuguesa 1.e4 e5 2.Bb5. Lisboa: Caminho.

You can't really judge the value of a defense variation in the Spanish Opening by its results in correspondence. Nowadays correspondence chess – at the top level – is almost 100% drawn games played top computer against top computer. That's mostly a waste of electricity.

The book is now mostly outdated because of the arriving of perfect chess played by top computer/engines.

The opening won a contest organized by a Portuguese chess magazine in year 1945 or 1943. The magazine got many proposals of unnamed openings and the one to win would get the name "Abertura Portuguesa". 1.e4 e5 2.Bb5! won the contest (the "!" meaning surprise and not necessarily excellence).

The book is now out of print:

https://www.wook.pt/livro/a-abertura-portuguesa-pedro-paulo-sampaio/58619

Now my answer to the question: – what's the sense of this opening?

It is a good way to show that we — Portuguese — we have a sense of humour.

Uhhhh years ago a classmate in chess class said his opponent did this