It was kind of a fluke...

There was a guy at my work who liked to play chess against me during lunch. He was not very good - probably a playing strength about 700-800. I was about 1400-1500 USCF at the time. I could beat him by spotting him a piece.

He didn't like me to handicap myself, so I had to self handicap to make it interesting. I decided to play offbeat openings, thinking that they were weak, and would make the game more interesting for me.

What I found was.... I ended up winning even faster than normal!

I couldn't believe it - these openings like 1. g4 were supposed to be "bad", but I was crushing this guy much faster than I would with moves like 1. e4.

A few weeks later I was playing in a weekend tournament in Denver. I was having a rough time, and lost 3 games in a row. I was on the bottom board, in the last round, with the white pieces. I decided - what the heck - and played 1. g4 in my first rated tournament game.

I ended up winning a piece right in the opening, and had an easy win!

After that I started playing the Grob A LOT. It really helped to sharpen my tactics, and helped me to learn to "think outside the box" when it comes to chess, and chess openings.

The Grob has a lot of tricks, traps, and tactics in it. In this article we will look at some of them.