JohnClay wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 6:30 am
In high school I came up with this opening which I called "the Atlantic Wall". I thought it was pretty strategic though I didn't think very deeply about it....
chess1.PNG
You have control of the centre, which is good.
But you're lacking in two other important parts of the opening.
Development: You need to get your pieces (knights and bishops in particular) out early as they can cover more ground than your pawns in the early game. Also moving them out helps with your second goal (of castling for defense). In fact, where your pawns are right now, they are blocking the development of your knights. The most natural squares for both of your knights (two up and one towards the centre) are now blocked. If you move them to their next most natural squares (one up and two towards the centre) then they will block your bishops. So you will find it difficult to develop from this position.
Defence: An important goal in the early game is to get castled, which gets your king out of the middle of the board and nestles him in behind pawns that can protect him (central pawns do not offer good protection as you almost always need to push them out to enable development and controlling the centre). In order to castle, you need to develop at least a knight and a bishop, which is complicated to do in a good way for the reasons mentioned before. Another big problem is that if you castle short, your king will be on g1 (where the knight on the right is at the moment), and by moving your pawn on f, you've created a big weakness along the light-squared diagonal (g1, f2, e3 ...). Enemy pieces will be able to pressure that diagonal. If you castle long, you will have a similar weakness on the dark-squared diagonal.
No opening is without flaws, but it seems like there's a lot of problems for development and defence here. I'd be surprised though if there weren't a name for this sort of opening as white.
The most similar one I know of is
the Stonewall.
ashi wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 7:12 am
I had, and may even still have, a magnetic travel chess set
Oh I definitely need one of those. For the postcard chess I have tried to keep a cheap and cheerful board out on my desk with the current position, but the cats will not indulge me. Looks pretty cat proof that option.