Underrated chess openings?

[Kevin Pacey]

Posters may wish to opine on what they think are some underrated chess openings. In my spare time now and then I take a cursory look at what might qualify, at least as (somewhat) interesting offbeat openings. In the past I looked at books for assistance coming up with such material, but nowadays databases can also be helpful. Chess Assistant 16 (CA16) is a database program that rates a huge number of move sequences, looking at the terminal position of many with an engine for an unknown amount of time (besides providing human evaluation symbols at times). Since all of what I have in mind for White is considered fully playable by most books and/or databases (one luxury of moving first is a rich selection of palatable offbeat choices), I'll show what are CA16's numerical evaluations for all of poor Black's openings, i.e. those offbeat (and suspect) ones that I found to be of interest recently. Note I included options vs. White's fully respected 1st flank moves (1.c4/1.Nf3/1.g3) - someone once noted they had not much offbeat to play vs. those, so why do so vs. 1.e4 and 1.d4(?):

Black:
vs. 1.e4:
1...d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 Nbd7 (intending ...e5, Philidor Defence-like): 0.33;
1...e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 f5 (Ruy Lopez Schliemann Defence [or Jaenisch gambit]): 0.44;
1...c5 2.Nf3 a6 (O'Kelly): 0.26;
1...c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 e5 5.Nb5 a6 (Lowenthal): 0.18;

vs. 1.d4:
1...Nf6 2.c4 d6 (intending Old Indian Defence, with ...Nbd7, ...e5, ...Be7): 0.29;
1...Nf6 2.c4 b6 (Queen's Fianchetto Defence - intending 3...Bb7): 0.29;
1...d5 2.c4 e5 (Albin Counter-gambit): 0.44 plus 2.Nf3 Bg4: 0.33;
1...d5 2.c4 Bf5 (Baltic Defence): 0.48 plus 2.Nf3 Bf5: 0.22;

vs. 1.c4:
1...b6 (or ...e6) intending 2.d4 e6 (or ...b6 - i.e. English Defence): 0.18;
1...Nf6 intending Old Indian formation: 0.29;
1...b5 2.cxb5 a6 (English Jaenisch gambit): 0.56;
1...Na6 (Lemming Defence - played by some strong masters, at least): 0.33;

vs. 1.Nf3:
English Defence-like formation: 0.29;
Hippopotamus formation (...g6 and ...b6): 0.56;
Old Indian formation: 0.29;
1...b5 (Reti Polish variation): 0.48;

vs. 1.g3:
Old Indian formation: 0.22;
1...d6 2.Bg2 c6 (possibly intending ...Bg4 later): 0.18;
1...h5 2.Nf3 b5: 0.52;
1...g5: 0.41;

White:
1.b3 (Larsen's Opening): 0.00;
1.f4 (Bird's Opening) -0.07[!];
1.e4 including: King's Gambit: -0.41[!], Closed Sicilian, main [6.Be3]: -0.11[!], Exchange French: 0.11, early Bg5 vs. Pirc/Modern: 0.22 each [with 3.Nc3], Exchange Caro-Kann: 0.07;
1.d4 including: Colle [vs. ...d5, with c3]: 0.00; Zukertort [vs. ...d5, with b3]: 0.07 (if 1...c5 then 2.d5 Nf6 3.Nc3: 0.33, 2.e3: 0.07, 2.c3: 0.00 and 2.dxc5: 0.11 all possible).

Finally, here's a link to an old chess.com thread re: underrated chess openings (seems to be a Class player discussion):

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/che...rated-openings

[Aris Marghetis]

Interesting post Kevin. Of the three Whites that have negative scores, I'm surprised King's Gambit is lower than Bird's Opening (with From's Gambit or not?), and that Closed Sicilian is also negative. By the way, did you miss including the scores for the last few (after Closed Sicilian)? If you edit your post, thank you in advance.

[Kevin Pacey]

Thanks. No, I only included a few White scores, since I thought Black's were generally more interesting. I'll need to plug in my other laptop sometime if I do the research to update my first post with the other White scores, since it has the chess software. Life's getting busy for me, but I had some spare time earlier. [edit: rest of numerical scores now added, some corrected too; Bird's Opening is scored by CA16 already at move one, so must not have KG as best for White in case of 1.f4 e5 - iirc, vs. Bird's 1...d5 widely considered better than 1...e5 nowadays.]