Chess Trolling: The Art of Playing Bad Chess Openings to Tilt Your Opponent

Chess is a game of strategy, calculation, and imagination. It is also where psychological tactics can determine the outcome of a game. This has been true at every level of the game and throughout chess history.

Bobby Fischer once recalled Mikhail Tal teasing him in the opening of a game by pretending to play the Caro-Kann, an opening he was struggling against. Tal hovered his piece over c6 for a moment before moving it up to c5 to play the Sicilian Defense, his standard line. 

“Trolling” or baiting your opponent with your opening is a fine art. If done right, it can be a tricky way to create an unbalanced game, but going too far can infringe on fair play. Let’s explore how some unsound openings can give you a psychological edge. 

What Does it Mean to Troll? (And When is it Cheating?)

In Internet discourse, the word is used to describe antagonizing online through posting random or inflammatory material. 

In chess, certain kinds of behaviors on the board may be considered trolling. Many are banned by online platforms and tournaments. Online, this includes spamming draws, aiming to distract or frustrate using the chat function, or refusing to make a move and running out the clock. All of these violate the fair play guidance of online platforms and, beyond that, are simply bad etiquette. In tournaments, rules vary, but any active attempts to distract or antagonize your opponent are usually not allowed. 

The form of trolling we will look at today takes place on the board. It is legal and often carried out in a more lighthearted spirit. Friendly high-level players may joke with each other by playing theoretically ridiculous openings.

Types of Legal Trolling

The moves you make and when you make them can communicate something to your opponent. 

In some games of chess, one player may be in an overwhelmingly winning position, but their opponent may choose not to resign. The winning player might offer a major piece for capture to indicate that the game is over and the opponent should resign. In similar scenarios, they might underpromote multiple pawns to create a more flamboyant and unnecessary checkmate. 

Players might also use the clock to troll their opponent. If they have a checkmate in one and a few seconds on the clock, they might wait to deliver it at the last moment. Similarly, if a player hangs a piece, they may leave them in suspense before capturing it. 

In the opening, there are certain theoretically sound and legitimate moves. Most players above a certain rating will immediately know that an opening is reasonable, bad, or a joke. In the next section, we’ll take a closer look at how certain openings can tease your opponent.

Opening Antics

Playing lesser-known openings is a good tactic in chess. Unlike king or queen pawn openings, it takes your opponent out of their preparation and forces them to calculate early in the game. Your opponent may well have Italian Game ideas, but will be less likely to have memorized a response to an English Opening system.

However, trolling your opponent requires going beyond coming up with an unexpected French Defense response. These chess openings may be unknown and completely crazy, or playable but highly dubious. Here are a few examples and why you might play them. 

The Scholar’s Mate Debate

The Scholar’s Mate is a 4-move checkmate played with White. 

After getting to this position, if Black blunders with the ordinary-seeming move Nf6, White delivers checkmate Qxf7#. 

Beginners often attempt these aggressive early attacks and traps because other beginners often fall for them. However, an intermediate player will be able to easily defend against the Scholar’s setup and can often punish the attempt. Developing the queen early is usually not advisable, and in this case it can be chased back while Black develops their pieces. 

Overall, the opening is considered suboptimal. To play it at an intermediate or advanced level can be seen as insulting, disrespectful, or trolling. It is a way of saying, "I think so little of your chess that I think I can mate you in 4 moves". Or, "I’m going to play a bad opening and beat you anyway".

However, there is some pushback on this. Some argue that even after Black refutes the Scholar’s Mate itself, the position is not bad for White. 

Joke Openings 

While the Scholar’s Mate is debatable in terms of quality, some chess openings are so bad they can only be taken as a joke or an insult. One such opening is the Bongcloud Attack.

Why is it bad? Let me count the ways:

1. Gives up castling
2. Puts the king in a vulnerable position
3. Blocks in both the queen and the bishop
4. Wastes a developing move

The opening's ability to contradict every opening principle is almost impressive. This is a prime example of a trolling opening. Again, the player is saying that even with this insane second move, they can win. Otherwise, they are just doing it for comic value. 

The game has been played a surprising number of times by grandmasters, even in serious tournaments. Most famously, Hikaru Nakamura and Magnus Carlsen played a double Bongcloud in the preliminary round of a 2021 online chess tournament. Both players were already through to the knockout round, so the game was moot. Magnus played the opening with White and Nakamura followed suit. Rather than play out the crazy position, they forced a draw by threefold repetition.

The Worst (Playable) Openings

The following openings are theoretically bad first moves. They fail to control the center, develop usefully, or protect the king. Playing one of these against a stranger may be enough to raise an eyebrow, but probably not enough to bring on a full-blown tilt. However, against a friend who lost three games in a row against you, it might be enough to push them over the edge. 

Barnes Opening (1. f3)

Starting off strong with perhaps the worst opening move in the game, we have the Barnes Opening.

If followed by g4, it opens up the possibility for the quickest checkmate in the game: Fool’s Mate (1. f3 e5 2. g4 Qh4#).

However, even if White follows it up with more reasonable moves, it’s still bad. The move gives up the king's early safety, claims no space in the center, and keeps the bishop and the queen blocked in. Black has a clear advantage from the get-go. 

The Grob Opening (1. g4)

The Grob Opening is similar in that it can lead to Fool’s Mate if followed by f3. It also ruins the potential for a kingside castle and makes the pawn immediately vulnerable to attack from Black’s bishops.

However, this is actually a tricky line in the opening that many don’t know. As such, it can be effective if the uncommon first move catches your opponent out. Read Have Some Fun With The Grob Opening to see how to play for advantage. 

The Amar Opening (1. Nh3)

This one hurts to look at. We’ve heard the knight on the rim is dim, and it certainly looks that way here. White makes no attempt to fight for the center and puts the knight where it can only attack two useful squares. Black can do the same thing with Adam’s Defense (Nh6). Basically, this kind of knight move gives up any opening advantage and makes transposition into common opening lines more difficult.

Magnus Carlsen played the Amar Opening in a rapid-game tournament against grandmaster Aleksey Dreev and went on to win. Could this have been a successful example of opening trolling?

Conclusion: Is Trolling Worth It?

The risks of playing a bad opening are pretty clear. If your opponent keeps their head, you’re just in a worse position. If you’re playing something untheoretical on purpose, you better have a good plan in place. In some cases, something suboptimal but trappy, like the Grob, can be very successful at the beginner and intermediate levels. 

Another lesson we learn from this kind of play is that the opening is not always as important as we think it is. Playing silly opening moves can lead to a losing position, but if your opponent fails to capitalize, the game may quickly even out. More than trolling your opponent, what a weird opening does is challenge them to calculate. Beyond memorization, do they understand opening theory enough to claim the initiative?

Personally, I think it's worth trying an occasional weird opening move. It makes for interesting games and creates a new challenge for players.