What's with rook pawn openings?
Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 28,590
There are these clowns that play a4, h4, a5, h5 etc. early. Generally they get way behind in development, but you can develop attacks on castled positions, advanced passed pawns, pressure on open rook files, rooks into play, etc. How bad are these?
Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 3,890
They're bad but a stronger player could still pretty easily beat a weaker player playing such an opening. And maybe white concedes his theoretical opening edge, but it'd still be game when played between two comparable opponents. It's not like such an idea can be refuted per se. It'd actually take an extremely strong player to prove such an idea is incorrect so like most stuff about openings - it doesn't really matter that much.
because robots are strong
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 22,925
guys like SongLo209 and YaacovN on ICC play these kind of things on ICC all the time. yeah it's just 5-minute or just blitz but they hammer strong titled players with them all the time. that is not to say that I think the openings are good, but like Do it Right says, I think it speaks more to their tactical abilities and plain ol' skills that it doesn't matter what they play, really. actually it's quite interesting to watch them play these kinds of games because it shows how different attacks can be approached/generated. I hate playing against good players who do this too.
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 2,475
DiR said it well, as he always does. It's not that the rook pawn moves are catastrophic, just that most players would rather play lines as white that offer more of an advantage.
I actually know a guy that used 1.h4 to beat a 2200 player and catapult himself over the 2200 (NM) level for the first time.
