Opening surprises

What are opening surprises? What are the advantages of them?

Opening surprises are playing moves that look weird and they usually aren't the best engine move in the position. They always have a cleverly hidden trap that the opponent may fall for if they play the natural moves.

The advantages of them, of course, are to make your opponents nervous as they have no idea what to do. So you will get a huge time advantage if you are well prepared. Let's take a look at my first example which was from my most recent otb tournament.

Here we see that I have played Nd5!!. Of course exd5 is horrible as exd5+ and White wins a pawn easily.

i borrowed this idea from the Smith Morra where Nd5!! is often played too. The improvement is that I did not sacrifice a pawn in the opening. He was visibly shocked and proceeded to make a long think before playing passively with Qd8. He was afraid that I had some devastating trap when I didn't. This opening surprise shook him and he could not play with full concentration.

I instantly blitzed out a5!. His only move was exd5 and go into a scary middlegame where all his pieces get stuck. He was still afraid of my preparation and played the passive move d6?. The game continued Nb6 Rb8 D3 and I converted easily.

The wrong type of opening surprise:

Note: A Lefong is NOT an opening surprise, it is a cheap trick only patzers play.

65% of ppl here premove Bg7 and White wins a bishop. The white player will claim that it is an "opening surprise" as Black was surprised by the fact that White played 2.Bh6.

If Black plays Bxh6, then it will be 0-1 in 10 moves. That is patzertic behaviour and no one should try to Lefong. Why would you play chess to lose in 10 moves? Ask yourselves, Lefongers.

Hope this blog inspired you to play real opening surprises. C ya!