Beginners playing off-beat openings: good or bad? PDF Print E-mail
Written by Sciurus   
Saturday, 19 May 2007

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By incident I clicked on a link leading me to live-coverage of the Mtel tournament 2007 in Sofia/Bulgaria. And what I saw was a big surprise to me: Nisipeanu was using the Qd6 variation of the Scandinavian defense against the King's Pawn opening played by Topalov (1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qd6, replay the game). I am playing the Qd6 Scandinavian myself, so the opening itself did not surprise me but it being used by a high-ranking grandmaster at a top tournament did.

This made me start thinking "Why am I playing a relatively off-beat or secondary opening?" and "Is playing an off-beat defense good for me?" To be honest I pretty much stumbled into it. While starting out as absolute beginner I read all this advice of playing open games starting with 1. e4, which I did for a couple of weeks. However, I quickly discovered that there are many many different ways to defend with Black against 1. e4 and on my level of play it just doesn't really matter which opening I use because almost all my games are decided by tactics anyway. Therefore, I decided to simply choose one defense against the popular 1. e4 and stick to it. Incidentally, the Scandinavian is recommended for beginners in the introduction of Modern Chess Openings (MCO-14) and I decided to go for it.

Some statistics:

Of 229833 games starting with 1. e4 in my master games database, 5.4% start with the Scandinavian Defense (1. e4 d5).

The Qd6 variation (2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qd6) makes up a little less than 11% of all Scandinavian Defense games.

The good thing with the Scandinavian Defense is that there are not terribly many lines to learn - just the right thing for a lazy person with bad memory like me. However, there is one big drawback of playing an opening that is not used frequently in master-level play: In contrast to popular openings such as the Ruy Lopez there is not much good information available on the Scandinavian. It is not that there would be no books specializing on it. After all, there are tons of books on even the most obscure and specialized openings. But most specialized opening books are more like lists of variations with occasional remarks like "White is better here" and do not give explanations of general ideas and game plans. And it is exactly these wordy explanations of the ideas behind even the most simple developing moves that are best suited for aspiring chess beginners.

In retrospective, I would probably choose a more popular defense against 1. e4 if I would start over again. It is not that I don't like the Scandinavian Defense or think that it is particularly bad. I just think that having some well annotated master games like the ones in "Logical Chess: Move By Move" by Irving Chernev (my review) where every single move is explained in plain english is very helpful to understand the basics. What is your take on this?

The Scandinavian seems to be more popular among amateurs than among professional chess players. In fact, several chess bloggers seem to use it as their main defense against 1. e4. If anybody reading this is interested in discussing a few games with this opening, please contact me directly or leave a comment.

Comments (11)Add Comment
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written by Blue Devil Knight, May 21, 2007
I think what you've said is very important and not appreciated by enough people who advocate the offbeat openings: If your opening is offbeat, then you will miss out on the wealth of pedagogical material available in nearly every beginning opening book. It would be unfortunate to miss out on such explanation-rich prose, which is what novices need more than variation trees. (I tried starting out with 1...b6, using Bauer's excellent book, but soon realized it was a mistake).
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written by Atomic Patzer, May 22, 2007
I've been playing the Scandinavian Qa5 variation for about year now and have done OK. On Sunday I watched (on ICC) a Scandinavian Qd6 played in the US Championship and black won! Chesslecture.com has a three part series on the Qd6 Scandinavian. I'm sticking with it and hope to start learning and playing the Qd6 and Nf6 variations soon.

Just because an opening is not popular at the highest levels doesn't mean it isn't playable. It's true that those openings don't have the wealth of literature as the others but I take this as an opportunity to hone my analytical skills while going over my games.

And the Grandmasters may be missing out on a lot of fun by not playing the Fajarowicz or the Urusov's gambit, etc...

I'm on ICC. Drop me a note at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it if you would like to play some games. I'm flexible.
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written by Sciurus, May 22, 2007
BlueDevilKnight:
Then I guess you are ahead of me - I am simply too stubborn to drop the Scandinavian for now... It might be a personality thing, too, because I usually avoid doing things the way the majority does but it slowly creeps up to me that there might be some advantage of swimming with the stream.
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written by Sciurus, May 22, 2007
AtomicPatzer:

Thanks, I will take you up on that offer.

I like the idea of being forced to analyze on your own. If one reads some explanation it is very easy to say "yes, that's it!" without really deeply thinking about it and later on it turns out that the understanding is superficial at best. However, there are many good moves that I would never see not even to talk about recognizing as good moves on my own. Some external input in form of books or by other players can help a lot there.
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written by Atomic Patzer, May 22, 2007
The first thing I did after choosing an opening repertoire was to gather as much specific study material as I could find. Mostly books and articles. Man, has my library grown! I need more info on the anti-Sicilians though. And I use Fritz to help me analyze my games.

I'm not actively studying my openings yet (strategy and endgames for now). I've chosen a repertoire and some tabiya moves for each but mostly I wing it on general principles.
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written by Blue Devil Knight, May 22, 2007
Then I guess you are ahead of me

I think the point is that I am likely behind you, as I still like to draw on the wealth of explanatory prose offered by the opening books for beginners out there.

And it's not like the Scandinavian is particularly offbeat. You guys are being pussies: play Owen's Defense if you want offbeat! If white, play 1 g4!
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written by Sciurus, May 22, 2007
BlueDevilKnight:

I think the point is that I am likely behind you, as I still like to draw on the wealth of explanatory prose offered by the opening books for beginners out there.


Sorry, did not mean it like that. I meant to say that I consider people who learn from their experiences and change their approach accordingly more reasonable.

Off course you are right that the Scandinavian is not terribly exotic. A while ago I was actually planning to start out with 1. a6 with the plan to transpose into a Scandinavian if Black plays 1. ... e4. I figured that would save me some reading smilies/cheesy.gif
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written by Robert, May 28, 2007
I play with Scandinavian Qd6 against 1.e4 and my result showed 65% wins and I increase my rating from 1600-1700 to 1800-1900 in just 6 months. But I developed my Qd6 subvariation myself with Fritz 10. So, I never beat 1900 rating before but after using Scand Qd6 now I can beat 2000 rating player. They confused what to attack, because it is so solid.
For me, Scan Qd6 still can be used until I get to 2000.
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written by Sciurus, May 29, 2007
Robert:

Nice to hear that the Scandinavian Defense works out so nicely for you. Can you write a little more on how you use the computer to develop your opening play? Do you play whatever the computer suggests or do you add some strategic knowledge on your own?
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written by Norway, January 05, 2009
I play the Scandinavian and I want to recommend a book: "Modernes Skandinavisch, Band 2" by Wahls, Muller and Langrock. This is enormous opening book (the best I have seen), rather than focusing on memorizing, it focus on ideas (focus is on 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5). Unfortunately this book is written in German, and it has not yet been translated into English. But use some time to study German; I think you will not regret it. It is written by a Scandinavian player, Wahls, and he knows what he is talking about. I have read Emms "The Scandinavian, 2ed", but I do not feel comfortable playing black when reading this book. Wahls manage to layout the black ideas (control over the white squares, press in the d-line, etc) in a much better way than Emms.
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written by Sciurus, January 05, 2009
Norway-
thanks for the book tip! I might take a look at it when I have more time for chess again. Luckily, I do not even have to learn German because I am German. smilies/grin.gif

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