Studies in turned F #1

Anton (Gerenuk) requested that I post something on the turned-F opener. I haven’t got a handy nickname for it; the players who currently use it most are BIGWOOD and Bobby_Bob, but I’m not sure whether either of them can be said to have first dibs on it. (Any suggestions for a name are welcome!)

UPDATE: Bobby_Bob tells me it’s BIGWOOD who laid down most of the groundwork for this opening. So perhaps it should be indeed called the Bigwood F!

There are two varieties of this opener, depending on whether the F’s 3-bar (the row of 3 squares) is horizontal or vertical. Here is a typical game with a horizontal orientation for the 3-bar, where orange replies with X-up. I’m not sure that that is necessarily a bad response, but certainly orange must be wary. The T5 below strikes me as a very poor response.

Violet 74 - Orange 61

I didn’t witness this game but here is the order of moves I infer:

1. F – X
2. Z5 – T5 (this is a mistake: U or P would be better)
3. Y – Y
4. L5 – F
5. T5 – V5
6. W – L5
7. N – W
8. P – U
9. I5 – I5 (very bad move)
10. L4 and the rest of the game is obvious

Needless to say, this is a risky opener, not least because the other lines if orange DOESN’T play X-up are far more ambiguous.