Why do people play the Scandinavian Defense??

i rate the scandinavian as the 5th among major openings against 1 e4. there's the sicilian, the open games, the caro kann, the french, and then the scandinavian. maybe the pirc-mordern can compete with this 5th spot but it's way too difficult move order wise.

losing time with the queen in this specific case is not that bad, provided you know how to continue. it's just not a good opening to demonstrate general principles, but it doesn't automatically make it bad.

i think people play it in some way because other people dismiss it as bad without studying it deeply enough to reach that conclusion. i play both sides of the scandinavian as i am a 1 e4 player myself. i have only played the qd8 and qd6 versions, and a bit of the portuguese so i can't speak for the other lines that have merit, but i can say that after all the study i have done i can't bring myself to say that the opening is bad. i can say it's not as good as the other four definitively, largely because of the scarcity of playable lines black can use and the limited strategic options which make it easier to study for an opponent.

It's kinda straightforward.

Scandi is a good choice for noobs for multiple reasons... and I play it too, so I don't want anyone taking that the wrong way heh.

Reason one:
White has no way to avoid it after 1.e4. Other openings you study, maybe white deviates. For example you want to play a Benko gambit? Well even if white plays 1.d4 and 2.c4, he can decline with 3.e3. After 1.e4 d5 there's no way out of it (other than transposing to a blackmar diemer gambit, or other dubious gambit I guess).

Reason two:
Development is easy (no bishop stuck behind pawns or some problem piece like this) and you set up a very solid pawn structure (that usually arises out of a caro or slav)

-

-

The Scandinavian Defense keeps the center uncluttered by pawns, which means lots of open lines and lots of tactical attacking ideas.  That's why people play it - those are the kinds of games that are fun for them.

It's easy to play and JB has many fans.

@llama47 you can get a blackmar diemer out of it

i don't know why you would want to though (maybe surprise value)

@llama47 just saw you already mentioned that lol

Yeah, I mention the BDG in my post.

It's actually a great gambit for speed chess because black needs to know some lines, and probably sees it fewer than once in 100 games. Meanwhile as white you can get it out of many move orders, so you'll have massive experience = a nice clock advantage vs most opponents.

yeah you can't underestimate that. I just played the white side of a French Guimard. I had a great position but got crushed by my own clock.

I recently lost to this silly Scotch sideline in blitz... we played ~15 moves of theory, but I used too much clock, and lost in a winning position. I haven't played against this in maybe a year so it was hard to remember (the fact that all of white's moves make a threat help black to remember heh).

-

-

I used to think that too - but as I played more, I came to accept that the Scandinavian is, in fact, a fine opening. Although black brings his queen out early - What will you do to punish it? Often I get a Scandinavian transposition from the Nimzowitch Defense (I only play occasionally)

The best thing for white to do is to play the caro-kann and Scandi as black for a little bit. You get to feel the position from black's side, the most annoying and challenging moves from white, etc... but most importantly, you learn to handle the caro kann structure that arises in almost every Scandinavian game.

VS