The Opening Isn't Always About the Position

Every guide on this site treats an opening as a fixed thing to evaluate: is it sound, what does the data say, what should you actually play. That's the right way to learn one. It's not the only reason someone plays one.

Sometimes the opening isn't chosen for its own merits at all. It's chosen for one specific person sitting across the board. Here's a common way players do that, then two real games: one where it worked and one where it didn't.

Preparing for a habit, not a position

Say your opponent has a habit you know about. A classic example is the Petroff Defense: plenty of players answer 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 with 2...Nf6 almost every time, because it's one of the most solid replies to 1.e4. If you know that, deep preparation against the Petroff is one option. The other is simpler.

Don't let them play it. With 2.Bc4 instead of 2.Nf3, the Bishop's Opening, White never plays Nf3 on move two, so Black never gets the chance to answer with the Petroff at all. It isn't a trick or a gimmick. It's a completely legitimate opening that happens to sidestep one specific reply, and it's a good example of choosing an opening because of who you're playing.

This is worth sitting with. The Bishop's Opening didn't become a better opening that day. It became the right tool for one specific job: taking a known, comfortable weapon away from one specific opponent.

Shown the idea minutes before the round

Go back further, to Berlin in 1918. Milan Vidmar was due to face Akiba Rubinstein, one of the strongest players alive at the time, and by his own account was still searching for a defense with minutes to spare before the round started.

István Abonyi, one of the Hungarian players who'd helped develop a new idea a couple of years earlier, showed Vidmar the Budapest Gambit on the spot. Vidmar adopted it immediately, with essentially no preparation beyond what he'd just been shown, and delivered a crushing 24-move win. Rubinstein's kingside never caught up.

There's a real irony here that's worth being honest about, since it cuts against the neat version of this story. Rubinstein himself later assessed that the exact structure that beat him actually favors White with accurate play, a conclusion modern engines broadly agree with. The opening wasn't secretly superior. Vidmar won because Rubinstein was unprepared for something genuinely unfamiliar, not because the Budapest Gambit was quietly the better choice all along. Once the surprise wore off, the objective assessment didn't really change.

The one that didn't work

It would be easy to stop there and let this read as "surprise openings win games." They don't, not reliably, and the honest version of this piece needs a real loss in it.

In 1992, Nigel Short faced Anatoly Karpov in the first game of their Candidates semifinal in Linares. Short, as Black, opened with the Budapest Gambit, the same opening that had worked so well for Vidmar seventy-four years earlier.

It didn't work. Karpov won the game.

Short still won the overall match, 6 points to 4, and went on to challenge Garry Kasparov for the World Championship the following year. One lost game with a surprise weapon didn't decide anything by itself. But the specific idea, that unfamiliarity alone would be enough to unsettle Karpov the way it once unsettled Rubinstein, simply didn't hold up against a player who reads a genuinely unfamiliar position for what it actually is rather than panicking at its name.

Keep reading

More from this part of the site:

• Chess Opening Principles: The core ideas behind every good opening, backed by our move data.

What actually connects these

None of these examples are really about whether the Bishop's Opening or the Budapest Gambit are good. They're about a different question entirely: what does this specific opponent do, and does this specific opening take that away from them.

Sidestepping the Petroff works because it's surgical, aimed at one exact habit, not a general hope that the opponent will be uncomfortable. Vidmar's choice worked because Rubinstein was caught in a moment where unfamiliarity mattered more than objective soundness, and that moment passed the instant the position became known. Short's choice didn't work because Karpov wasn't the kind of player who needed familiarity to play accurately.

The lesson isn't "play surprising openings." It's narrower and more useful than that: know what your actual opponent is likely to do, and ask honestly whether the reason you're choosing something is a real answer to that, or just the hope that unfamiliar will be enough on its own. Vidmar's surprise and Short's surprise both relied on unfamiliarity. Only one of them met an opponent it could actually unsettle.