Talk:Fred defence

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I didn't know if this was for real or not. A Google search turns up about 100 hits. Here is a webpage listing unusal openings, and it is listed, for what that is worth. Bubba73 (talk), 22:10, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

The opening (but not the name) is in my old copy of ECO, B00, note 1: 1. e4 f5? 2. exf5 Nf6 3. d4 d5 4. Bd3 +/-. I would probably leave it out (i.e. delete the article) except that might be an example of what not to do. Bubba73 (talk), 23:40, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I've heard of 1.f3 followed by 2.Kf2 being called the Fred; hadn't heard of this. But hey, Google shows it, and the opening scores 50% on chessgames.com (including three games between GMs Bernstein and Duras, though I'm not sure how serious these were). The Hippopotamus Defence survived a deletion vote easily, and that was when it referred to 1.e4 g6 2.d4 Nh6 3.c4 f6 -- the evidence for which consisted of one website by some unknown guy who played it twice against his computer, at fish setting, and scored .5 out of 2. (I've since added more respectable uses of the term, by real chessplayers.) By comparison, the Fred is eminently respectable. Krakatoa 07:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I do not think that it is respectable - a handful of games from a thematic match does not prove respectability - it proves only that my fellow-countryman Duras vas a very clever grandmaster, if he was able to defend 50% of his games after such an opening. I think that in the best case, this should be a redirect + a small remark in the article about King's Pawn Game. Nevertheless, Krakatoa, you should discuss it with User:Mister.Manticore on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess#So many chess openings - his wish is to delete even mainstream openings from Wikipedia.

In my opinion, Hippopotamus is a quite another case - it was played at the very top level twice and there is a book about it. This cannot be claimed in the case of Fred. Greetings, --Ioannes Pragensis 09:22, 27 November 2006 (UTC)