a 2300player tried the Budapest

  

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George Jempty    (2025-10-30)
a 2300-player tried the Budapest

and now has a -1.5 disadvantage


George Jempty    (2025-10-30 10:27:20)
a 2300-player tried the Budapest

oops meant to post this as a blog post LOL


Scott Ligon    (2025-10-31 00:49:54)
a 2300-player tried the Budapest

I don't know if you're talking about the Budapest in the context of correspondence games, but it's playable for black, just barely. I don't think it loses by force. I have played it several times on this site.


George Jempty    (2025-10-31 08:00:36)
a 2300-player tried the Budapest

I played the Budapest OTB for *decades*. As you say, playable "just barely". Same goes for the Benoni and the Dutch. Why handicap yourself with such disadvantageous openings in correspondence play?


Scott Ligon    (2025-10-31 12:46:50)
a 2300-player tried the Budapest

To make things just slightly interesting. There's no challenge at all in holding the draw with black while playing a standard opening. Modern engines make it trivially easy. But in the Budapest or the Albin Countergambit or Alekhine's Defense, I'm pretty sure black can still hold the draw, but you have to be careful.


Ilmars Cirulis    (2025-10-31 13:37:01)
a 2300-player tried the Budapest

Dutch is okay (very playable, imo) and interesting. :)


George Jempty    (2025-11-04 14:06:45)
a 2300-player tried the Budapest

Yes, Dutch is OK, but 2.Nh3!? is a challenge, and I've won at least one game on this server with that. But the Benoni and Budapest are significantly worse IMO. Like I say a 2300-player tried the Budapest against me and I have something like a +2.5 advantage (according to SF17) at move 23. Yes, he was not at all careful and definitely made a couple of very bad decisions. Interestingly, I see the average ELO he face is 1900, so I think his rating is really inflated and he doesn't do so well against stronger players, whereas I'm currently at 2175, and the average ELO I face is 2100. I try to "play up" for the strongest competition, rather than "play down" to pump up my rating.


Ulises Pineda    (2025-11-10 17:06:10)
a 2300-player tried the Budapest

Because the optimal defenses by black are so boring! And they don't offer any counter-play, specially against lower-rated opponents that could easily draw as white with those. In uncommon variations they have to think, and that's the only chance they slip.
There's also the aspect of overconfidence, chess engines have gotten so strong one thinks they can defend anything. That was a mistake I made last time I played a Benoni and lost, I thought I played the strongest defense, who knows if my opponent could also have defeated someone else in the same line, but it was a problem of evaluation, not depth, the engine was showing 1.0 scores for positions that were lost, and they were so complicated I couldn't keep up. Near the end my opponent wasn't even playing the moves I predicted and cut the game like a knife through butter.
But I'll always rather lose a game like that than playing the same boring defense that draws against anything but it's a snore fest, apparently I could just play moves from 300 million nodes blindly and draw anyway.
So I continue to play dubious lines and appreciate opponents that deviate from the norm to spice things up, I could easily be over 2300 at the cost of boring games, but I'll be getting there soon anyway and finally find out how people on that tier play against me, since I've never been able to join tournaments of that caliber.


George Jempty    (2025-11-12 16:06:48)
a 2300-player tried the Budapest

I guess for me it's kind of personal because I played the Budapest on and off for decades, even beat an IM with it in a simul, but eventually became convinced it was borderline unsound. I think you can get interesting games without playing *too* unsoundly, for instance as Black I play the Siesta


Ulises Pineda    (2025-11-12 20:26:59)
a 2300-player tried the Budapest

Yeah, I couldn't do anything against your Paris Defence, frankly, I've fared better against 3...Bc5 or 3...Nf6, still can't believe 3...d6 and 5...Nb8 held that well, but it was interesting while remaining solid.


George Jempty    (2025-11-17 23:41:26)
a 2300-player tried the Budapest

Actually I was not happy having to defend so precisely, and probably could not have done so OTB, so I'm giving up on it, and instead will take up a variation of the Two Knights