Are Scandi players less mature?

I used to play it ages ago when I didn't want to study before a tournament. So-so results. It's mildly irritating to face as White, but nothing really to fear.

The same source as that I quoted above says this about 3.Nf3:

"[3.Nf3 Nf6 leads to any other variation by transposition.]

Which I guess is just a fancy, roundabout way of saying "Hi" back

Yeap , John confirms, He is most scared of 3.Nf3 than any other 3. move by white. Nf3 is underrated and with pawns at d4 c4 Nc3 it can be very dangerous for black. It delays attacking the queen (so if you want to put knight on d7 first you have to move the queen first do d8, or play other line with Qd6/qa5/qf5) 

4.c4 Qd8 5.d4 (White cannot hope for an opening advantage without this move) 5...g6 and we have a transposition.

Ok, but what's the point of not letting white have an attack if you've made bad moves?

Here's the starting position of a typical line, engine says close to dead equal, but white has lots of dangerous attacking ideas -- yeah you can avoid this stuff, but then white has a very comfortable plus.

In any case, this counts as "one line"

Yes it's one line. Where are the bad moves in the line I quoted above?

4.c4 4...Qd8 and 5...g6

Maybe those moves have been played, but with all respect to the players, I don't think this was preparation.

I think you'll find that it is preparation.

Playing black I've had this line by transposition in blitz dozens of times... it's pretty bad to be honest. I've stopped trying this stuff against people over 1800. That said my opponents and I aren't GMs... but the engine also thinks it's pretty bad. If there's some trick to it let me know because I still dust this off now and then 

This is the mover order

I'm not sure there's any tricks really. The source I've been quoting from has this to say about this particular structure:

"In this structure with the White pawn pushed on c4, Black's strategy (TO DO) is the following:

- block the d4-d5 advance by c6, Nf6, Rd8
- put pressure on d4 by Bg7, Qb6, Rd8, Bg4 indirectly
- ONE OF: 

1) double the rooks on the d-file and then try to open the d-file by e7-e5

OR 

2) put the rooks on d- and e- files and try to advance e7-e5 opening the center and giving force to the g7-bishop."

 Hmm, that actually makes it sound pretty reasonable. You can target d4 with minors and white doesn't have a pawn break.

Quite so. If there's one thing I've learnt about the Scandi it's that looks can be deceptive. It's a bit of an oddball actually; I've no doubt at all that if IM Pfren was to have a say he'd look down his nose at this opening, it's far too dry for his taste and it has a reputation for being 'ugly' too. But Tiviakov has taken it to his heart and he's a far bigger beast than Pfren (hey, no offense if you read this sir!)

Nevertheless, the Scandinavian Defence remains a popular choice for players at our level - it's theory 'light', requires no heavy memorisation and is easy to learn. So long as you're willing to sit behind a solid formation and be patient it's a useful system to have in your repertoire.

Is this a great game? No. But I felt at the time (still do) that it perfectly bore out the overview that I presented in an earlier post, particularly this bit:

White has a better position, but also a main problem: Black has no weaknesses, no bad pieces, no weak kingside, ...nothing to be attacked. Little by little, Black improves his position, but White hardly can find a plan to improve his position. White's task is harder than Black's one. This often results in a change of position evaluation later in the middlegame, Black remaining with his solid position, while White compromised his own with unproductive operations.

Problem is, most people aren't masters. I suppose it all comes down to which opening you want to mangle.

If Teichmann70 is endorsing it, I have a bad feeling it's much worse than I could ever realize lol.

Now now

I guess that needs a little context. I say that because on the forums he calls lots of good material "terrible" like Dvoretsky and Yusupov... he gives no details, just one liners like "it was terrible, a waste of money."

Here's Karpov's most famously brilliant effort against the Scandinavian

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1068107

Yes the scandinavian players have all the bad character trades! Imagine someone from Scandinavia playing the Scandinavian defense, he should be the super douche, right?