No comment on diagrams with black-on-bottom. No comment on Illingworth's website design choices.
Quote:What makes the Scandinavian so easy to learn and master, and so effective against club players and masters?
- You force a specific type of position on the board, which the opponent can't effectively avoid.
- Your first 10-15 moves are generally the same (or similar) setups, with familiar middlegame and endgame plans.
- You’ll often gain a time advantage early in the game. You can play standard ideas, relying on your greater experience and understanding of the position. Your opponent has to make most of the tough decisions.
- You can understand the opening at a Grandmaster level relatively quickly, and still be better prepared than your opponents. By playing the Scandinavian, your opponent will be less comfortable than you on your ‘home’ territory.
Isn't that really like one-and-a-half reasons rather than four? You play the same moves because it's the same structure, and you have "more experience" because you are always playing the same structure, et cetera, et cetera. The Scandinavian is a decent opening, but it can be oversold. Each of Illingworth's inter-dependent points also has a counterpoint.
- Playing the same structure in every game kills the imagination. Larsen said that about the Benko Gambit (or was it the Stonewall?), and I feel the same applies to the Scandinavian.
- If you are always playing the same first 10-15 moves, you become very predictable. The Scandinavian doesn't work so well if you keep repeating it against the same opponent.
- As for getting a time (clock) advantage -- He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. A really good way to die horribly in the 3...Qa5 Scandinavian is to answer some goofy white "inaccuracy" with a quick, routine, "pre-programmed" move. Yes, I lost that way once with black. Then I saw the value, and have won that way at least a couple of times with white.
- If black can understand the opening at GM level quickly, then so can white. The reason whites don't prepare well against it is because they don't face it often. If you make it your main defense, you change that dynamic. Now they *will* prepare. And here is where the nature of the opening will turn against black, because there aren't many opportunities for black to vary (see point #2). When white starts playing GM-type moves, there may not be a decent way to avoid their preparation.
I looked at the modern-chess repertoire linked by TopNotch, and it seems incredibly narrow. At least Illingworth offers alternatives for black (3...Qd6, 3...Qd8, 2...Nf6).
Despite those reservations about the Scandinavian, I still feel it's valid as a second- or third-string opening. I have considered taking it up again, this time not as a sharp Smerdon-style rabbit-basher, but more as an Arkell-style slow-drip: I'm not winning, but that doesn't mean I'm agreeing to a draw. Ask me again at move 120 and we'll see.