If all you play is the Albin, you’ll remain a C player!
All the best, Joe Lux
Rated presently at 2103, (over 2200 in youth)
If you win all the rest of your games and lose all the Albins, you’ll be a master. How often does one face the King’s Gambit?
I never do!
If you lose all your Albins, why would you play it? It only has surprise value. I learned a very simple line against it from a Russian chess teacher. He said every Russian school boy knows it. It works!
All the best, Joe Lux
And who plays the Falkbeer Counter Gambit when they do?
Oh that’s the other one! (I could never remember opening names. I played 1. b4 regularly in tournaments and didn’t even know it was called “Orangutan”.) No, the Falkbeer is perhaps questionable, but the Albin is just bad.
ROFL! But it’s the Albin that allowed me to progress to ‘C’ in the first place.
(Unfortunately, that progression… was from ‘B’…) 
But remind me to play it against YOU, because you’ve certainly misplaced your MCO! 
Now, we are straying TOO FAR off-topic. Please delete your post. Where are the Moderators when we really need them? 
I found that learning the positions was more useful than learning their names. And against the Albin, one doesn’t really need MCO, as long as one remembers when not to play e3.
The Falkbeer is fine if one plays 3…c6! Black is OK.
I spent some time looking at Albin theory this weekend: IMO, it falls into the category of (objectively) total crap opening that is nevertheless (subjectively) quite uncomfortable to play against, especially for us non-masters.
Oh but the shock value is worth a pawn at least!
Who are these opponents who, when they see an unfamiliar opening, stop thinking and just let you beat them easily? I was disappointed that my opponents of all ratings seemed to be unaware of their obligations in this regard.
In my experience gambits work better when you’re White. (And this is correcting for the advantage White would have had in any case.) In Delaware, Bruce Baker (now of California) used to be fearsome with his gambits as White. Since I usually lost to him anyway, one time as White I decided “what the hell” and played the Goering Gambit against him, one of his pet openings. He took the pawn and I cleaned him up, just as if the colors had been reversed!
- d4 d5 2. c4 e5 3. de d4 4. e4 Nc6 5. f4 white is better. Simple.
All the best, Joe Lux
PS: I was taught 1. b4 as the Polish Opening.
There used to be a player in Nebraska who played the Kings Gambit. I always played the Falkbeer against him.
I, like others, have seen plenty of anecdotal support (some first-hand) for the effect chess has on kids, but I’m still waiting for a list of journal articles from refereed publications on the effects of chess on education.
At the point I stopped writing for Chess Life a few years ago, the next article I had planned was to be called, “In Defense of the Albin.”
I’ve got about half of it written and probably will end up publishing it somewhere, someday - when I’ve finally gotten over the idea I ought to be paid for published work (that was one good thing about writing for Chess Life).
Rather than a theoretical examination / analytical justification of an opening, it’s more of an aesthetic/romanting thing - in other words, yeah, even I admit the Albin is (probably) objectively bad. But it has this dark appeal to me. I’m channeling Tony Santasiere, who drew upon the 15th-century scholar Erasmus’s “In Praise of Folly” when naming his own trademark opening, “Santasiere’s Folly” (1.Nf3 d5 2.b4).
My (fatal?) love affair with the Albin traces to 3 games:
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Formanek-Oshana, Chicago 1970. You can see that one, lightly annotated (Formanek, rated 500 points higher, lasted all of 19 moves) in my Dec. 2006 CL article - or in 2 different CL issues back in the year it was played, if you’re a packrat like me
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Saidy-Binet, Las Vegas 1968 (ultimately won by White, but Black was ahead first); and
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My own spectacular win against Marc Yoffie from 1970 in the first game I essayed the gambit. Alas, no one, not even me, will ever see this game: I lost the scorebook in the hotel ballroom the same weekend I played it. (Hoping against hope to recover the score, a few years ago I managed to track down Marc Yoffie, a former US Student Team member who’s long been out of chess. But didn’t have it either.)
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One could also add a later eye-popping example - Schipkov - Meszaros, Kecskemet 1993 - that one a spectacular win for White. (But hey, this is about beauty, not winning…like I already said.)
Anyway, here’s my article’s lead:
"While this article’s title may suggest a theoretical treatise, in fact it is more of a historical one.
The story begins with a long-ago game that earned me notoriety across the Pacific Northwest and beyond. It was played in the 1971 U.S. Junior Open, in Portland, Oregon. I was the highest-rated player in that event (above Christiansen and Biyiasis!). But my hopes for a top place were dashed by the following Round 3 encounter with a local favorite…"
(Nah, Montchalin didn’t upset me by playing the Albin against me. IT WAS I who played the albin in that fateful game…and was duly crushed…)
If 1. Nf3, d5 2. b4 is “folly”, then 1. b4 is worse than folly. I would be happy to see Black answer 1. b4 with 1…d5, and I might indeed continue 2.Nf3 (or 2.Bb2) to control e5.
In fact I was happy to have 1.Nf3 answered with 1…d5. But that didn’t happen much, because everyone already knew enough to watch the dark squares (but not enough to get away with not covering them), so I could not count on even getting to “Santasiere’s folly”.
Joe, thinking back, you’re right. I also knew 1. b4 as the Polish opening. Maybe when people started to understand how silly it was, they started with “Orangutan”.
- b4 c6 2.Bb2 a5 3.a3 ab 4.ab Rxa1 5.Bxa1 Qb6 6.c3 Nf6 7.Nf3 d5 8.d3 Nbd7 9.Nbd2 e5 10.e4 Bd6 11.Be2 0-0 12.0-0 Re8 13.Qc2 Qc7 14.Re1 c5 15.bc Nxc5 16.Bf1 de 17.de Bf8 18.Bb2 Bd7 19.h3 Bc6 20.Nh2 Qd7 21.f3 Rd8 22.Nc4 Ba4 23.Qe2 Qc7 24.Rb1 Nh5 25.Ne3 Nf4 26.Qe1 Ncd3 27.Bxd3 Rxd3 28.Nhf1 Bc5 29Kh2 Qd7 30.Bc1 h5 31.c4 Bc6 32.Ra1 b6 33.Bb2 Be3 34.Bxe5 Ng6 35.Nxe3 Nxe5 36.Nf5 Rd2 37.Qg3 Ng6 38.Rb1 Qd8 39.h4 Bd7 40.Kh3 Rd4 41.Kh2 Bxf5 42.ef Rxh4 43.Kg1 Qd4 44.Qf2 Rh1+, and Black soon won. Lapshun-Jacobs, 2003.
Whenever I think about that book Yuri published about 1.b4 a couple years ago, my thoughts immediately jump to this game. White was on the back foot from move 6, and his game seemed to keep sliding further and further backward until…
I saw a similar(? guessing your intent) piece by Silman that is quite instructive. I cannot agree that the Albin is ‘crap’, there is a ton of potential. Of course, the biggest trap (as I think Joe Lux pointed out) is the play of 4. e3, which really puts White in a hole. But - what a natural move that ‘looks like’… huh? And even without it, I think Black has great opporunities after getting his QB out ahead of his Queen, playing Qd7 (in many variations - NOT all), then 0-0-0, and finally (against the fianchetto option, primarily) h4, h5. It’s a very exciting attack for the price of the Pawn, which is sometimes even recovered.
I know I speak and sound like a “C” player. But I’m looking forward to playing this in an upcoming tournament, if I get the chance. The real beauty is that many players that prefer 1. d4, imo, are at their core very conservative players. 2. … e4 will put a shiver up their spine, which was exactly Silman’s thesis.
Hey, what can I say – I am pumped up after beating a player tonight that was 350 pts superior to me. (Not with the Albin, but with an attack - as White - that was very satisfying.)
You guys are very “easy”, btw, to lure off-topic into (more) fun discussions of openings! :mrgreen: Thanks. 
If you want to see what can happen when you get too agressive with the Polish, here is my recent loss to an 8 year old.
gpcf.net/games/Chetan/chetan.htm
The second game is one where I won with it in 1993.
I like to think of the Polish as a double edged sword.
Com’on, guys… let’s get back off-topic. (At least while the Moderators appear to be on an extended-rainy-Friday donut break.)
The Albin is risky and speculative, but there is NO WAY it deserves to be discussed alongside the Oragutan, Polish, and Goering debacles. Com’on, even a C-player knows that!
I was remiss in not crediting ‘artichoke’ with the comment about avoiding 4. e3. The most exciting play, for Black of course, occurs after that pitfall is taken. But that is far from the full value of the opening. The simplest evidence is the frequency of play of the Albin, at high levels (e.g., Chessgames database). An order of magnitude more than these others, at least… and still quite actively played in recent years.
Joe raised an interesting point about the possibility of countering (for White) with 4. e4, and then 5. f4 (if I have the move numbers right). I have looked at this line, and it is interesting - but still by no means a decisive advantage for White, to my read. And while the “shiver up the spine” comment was somewhat facetious, and unfortunately nobody has ever resigned/fainted/dropped dead from my 2. …e4, I do know that a number of decent (B, C) players get a bit uneasy when they see it. And it is this group of players that would be unlikely to use Joe’s counter-counter. Replying with 3. e4, …maybe; but their brains just don’t compute 4. f4, or for that matter any use of f2-f4 opening sequences. (Look at Abby Marshall’s success with 2. f4 as White - psychology is probably a part of that.) I love using f2-f4 in openings - Kings’ Gambit, Albin, Schleimann… but admittedly I am still on the learning curve of these and others. Last night I won against a Sicilian by a very solid player, but one who I knew was a bit “programmed” in his lines, in part because I inserted 6. …f4 in my opening [off what I think is called the ‘Kan variation’ - ??] - which enabled a nice K-side attack after my …0-0-0 a few moves later. … f4 also later enabled …e5, banishing Black’s Queen, which had been posted early and prominently on c7, from ever really participating in the game.
Back to the Albin. To my admittedly limited analysis, and to a greater degree from a moderate amount of reading, it does not appear that the Albin has been “killed”. And the kind of players that I encounter who religiously stick with 1. d4 are ripe for it.
Maybe interested parties can restart this topic in a different forum - I might do that this weekend.
OK, that’s enough… donuts are almost finished.
TPGriffin, with all due respect… I think most of the others who commented in this thead about the value of the Albin were referring to objective value or lack thereof. Not its potential to frighten or induce blunders from D-, C- or even B-players.
Your entire comment relates only to the preceding sentence. I venture to say that even most D-, C- and B-players get little satisfaction from winning solely because an opponent blunders (as in the underpromotion line in the Albin after 4.e3 Bb4+). After all, when playing very weak opposition, they’ll often miss or hang something even in games that opened conventionally.
There are plenty of openings often adopted as practical weapons to intimidate weaker players. That such openings often succeed, doesn’t mean they are anything other than “crap.”
Some are little more than expressions of contempt for one’s opponent. For instance, when I was a 15-year old C-player, someone rated 500 points higher (but who may have already been a rating underdog based on my not-yet-published results - only he didn’t know it!) once answered my Ruy Lopez like so: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nce7. That’s not a typo - he played his QN to e7, not his KN. And while doing so he casually turned to the guy at the adjacent table and said aloud, “I wouldn’t play this against you.” Of course, I squashed him like a bug. (This paragraph, too, is the beginning of an article I’d hoped to get paid for writing, but gave up on after a certain editor evidently lost interest in my work. “How to Beat Up a Bully,” is the working title.)
Other openings favored by bullies are better than that, but are still plain awful (this group includes the Albin, according to high-level evaluations I have seen).
Still other openings have a degree of objective merit, but at the club and scholastic level are more often adopted in hopes of prevailing by a lightning attack against a clueless opponent… with the adopter having little or no understanding of how to proceed if the opponent knows enough to avoid the traps.
The Stonewall (with either White or Black) falls in this category. So, I suspect, does the Colle-Zukertort, favored by Susan Polgar (she of course played it from the “objective value” standpoint, against strong opponents, rather than as a “bully” weapon against weak opposition).
I have a hunch that two openings that dominate my current repertoire - Larsen’s Opening with White and its reverse, the English Defense with Black - will soon land in that last group, as they gain adherents. (Especially the English Defense. I fell in love with it a few years ago after observing a GM vs GM game where the aforementioned Susan Polgar lost to it in 20 moves. Adopting it regularly against all levels of opposition for the last 2 years or so, has added 100 points to my rating.)
I like to think my use of early queenside fianchettos is motivate by “objective value.” But, that bishop on b2 or b7 - squinting down the long diagonal at the enemy king (if he ends up castling short) - gives potential for just the sort of lightning attack that bullies love to uncork against the unwary.
The same reason Kasparov should have lost to the Center Counter and Karpov did have a lost to the Center Game. (Bobby J. never fell for that stuff).
All the best, Joe Lux