Kadas opening
The Kadas opening is an interesting and very questionable opening that will surely make you cringe. The thing is that it breaks all of the opening principles in chess, already in move one!
But the Kadas opening is not simply a blunder, you have to know that chess is very relative, like everything in life. Many conditions take part in the game of chess, even the clock, which doesn’t even have to do with chess essentially.
The point is the Kadas opening starts with an objectively bad move with white, but is still not clear how black is supposed to punish. This is why the Kadas opening should be considered and given some attention too!
Because surely these lines can get really messy quickly, not to mention that serves very well to take your opponent out of the book. This opening will impress you with the lines it offers, and they could be really dangerous.
This is like mind games but with chess openings! If you want to master the Kadas opening, make sure you read this post until the end!
The mainlines of the Kadas opening
To enter the Kadas opening we have to first play 1.h4 with white in move one! Awesome, we have made an incredibly bad move, but wait, there is still a game to be played!
The truth is that there is no theory about this movie because is objectively a bad move. But the interesting thing about it is that incredibly black has to be careful with the h-file open.
Amazingly, this opening has been played by many proficient grandmasters like Daniel Naroditsky. An example of how a game in the Kadas opening could go is the following:
And despite white’s reckless opening choice has some pressure in the position.
There is a very simple idea behind the move h4 at first, all you want to do is to take space in the kingside. We could say that you are preparing an attack on the kingside already on move one!
The Kadas opening has surprised more than one master, and if you don’t play correctly you can mess up and lose the game.
The Kadas opening is a good way to make your opponent fall for some psychological pressure. The fact that you are playing this with white denotes a high level of confidence in the player.
Just like the world champion Magnus Carlsen who suddenly started to play wacky moves against grandmasters in a great tournament! Using the Kadas opening is not a suicide, of course, you could play something else and be better.
But the Kadas opening should not be simply eliminated just because it looks a little suspicious at first. This opening hasn’t been clearly refuted yet, practically with no theory about it, it’s definitely playable.
If you can play something like the grob gambit (which is g4 on move one) this should be playable as well. With the little difference that chess masters have developed more theory on the grob gambit than in the Kadas opening.
Plans and ideas in the Kadas opening
As we have said, the plan is really simple, all you have to do is to prepare your attack on the kingside. But the truth is that you can play the Kadas opening in any way you want, also depending on what black plays as well.
What I mean is that you can play h4 and then e4 or d4, or even h6 as grandmasters have previously done.
A blitz game can be perfect to make your opponent confused, and it can be pretty dangerous to play against the Kadas opening. There are also other strategies, for example, you know that black is going to take the center, you can play with that.
If black takes too much in the center, as he probably will, you can counterattack that center, and get the advantage. Basically, you get to play the game as if you were black.
Sample game with the Kadas opening
We will give a closer look at a game played by GM Matlakov, against GM Alexander Morozevich, a tough opponent!
A grandmaster like Morocevich got tangled in the variations of this Kadas opening. He went too ahead of himself, simply thinking that white had given up all of his advantages and greedily took the h5 pawn.
Something weird to see at the grandmaster level, I guess he was simply confused by the power of the Kadas opening!
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