Hi there,
I've lost a lot of games in the past where my opponent played a dodgy or purely unsound opening and I tried too hard to push forward and punish it that I ended up losing.
I think this game, for the most part, is a good example of how to deal with dodgy opening choices by your opponent.
Also this is my 3000th Lichess game!
There are hardly any dogy or unsound openings. If you think some opening is dodgy or unsound, then play the good side of it against Stockfish. Here is an example where Carlsen plays the above opening:
GM's can get away with dodgy openings becuase they understand when the principles can be broken. but on a amatuer level i think are plenty of dodgy openings which deserve to be punished
I think it became quite dodgy after 6. ... Nc6. Before its perfectly playable.
a bit of a weird move order by both players, then 6..Nc6 means that black is just making things up. if black had played 6..d5 (like carlsen did) i don't believe that the position is bad for black at all, it's at least not much worse than the main lines of top tier openings.
that said, it's not fair to compare carlsen's opening play with OP's opponent, despite the same position being reached by transposition. eljanov certainly wouldn't have played 5 Nc3 if he had white's position in op's game (rather play Qe2/Nbd2/e5 instead), as allowing Bb4 in this position weakening control of e4 is not great if white can help it.
1..b6 is stronger against 1 Nf3 than against 1 e4, as then white cannot get the e4+d4 center without making a concession (like playing Nc3 allowing Bb4, without having pawn f3 available to support e4, is a concession in this structure). of course carlsen knows that.
in any case, it's very important to avoid the psychological trap of just assuming you deserve some kind of autowin because the opponent's opening play has (supposedly) not been great. if you don't know the reasons why it's not great (as in "concrete plans/variations"), then there is no reason not to take it seriously.
i don't believe that going into "punish mode" when the opponent plays something slightly weird is a healthy approach. most of the time, the best "punish" you can get is just that you're going to have some decent non-winning advantage, and that's ok.
if you start going out of your way to force the issue because "he did something wrong and must be punished", it's definitely going to backfire more often than not.
