Scavenging junkyard openings

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: out-of-book openings

This opening is quite popular with kids in chess classes. What's the bust?

I often try to play interesting moves to go to positions I've never gone to before. But after I play in tournaments I look at my games in databases and am disappointed that usually the first ten moves have been played before. I like to play out of book early. Can a computer generate a list of openings say up to the first six moves, that haven't been played in master chess and aren't loss of material or mate?

Hi Erik

My guess is that 4.Ng5 against the Two Knights Defence is the critical line, which Patrick might be thinking of. White defends up a pawn in the main variations, as you probably know. However there's no sign anyone at the top is giving up their choice of 1...e5, if they already play it, nor is White switching en masse to the Italian Game from the Ruy Lopez, so the big boys either know something Patrick doesn't or else they just may be oblivious - which do you think :)?

A computer program to search one or more mega-databases for unplayed positions (by masters) up to the first six moves would be unprecedented I imagine. Probably there are too many legal variations within the first six moves to finish a search within a short amount of time, I would guess. Also, most of the variations would be terribly bad, even without loss of material or mate happening when arriving at the final position after move six.

However if you know which highly unusal variations you are interested in playing in advance, assuming your opponents allow any of them, you can do a position search of a database. In case you don't know, it's for any final position reached by any move order, and if any games have been played they will be shown by the search.

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: out-of-book openings

My guess is that 4.Ng5 against the Two Knights Defence is the critical line, which Patrick might be thinking of. White defends up a pawn in the main variations, as you probably know. However there's no sign anyone at the top is giving up their choice of 1...e5, if they already play it, nor is White switching en masse to the Italian Game from the Ruy Lopez

I did forget the possibility of 3...Bc5 against the Italian Game, which makes my reasoning above not entirely sound. However many top players do choose the Two Knights Defence, rather than 3...Bc5, as they may think it holds more winning chances, or they don't wish to allow the Evans Gambit, when the early initiative belongs to White instead.