Scandinavian Defense | Ideas, Principles and Common Variations

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The Scandinavian Defense is a very dangerous weapon to have against e4. It’s flexible, aggressive, and it doesn’t require learning tons of opening theory.

The Scandinavian is also known as the Center Counter Defense. It is one of the oldest recorded openings, dating back to the 15th century. It was also mentioned by Lucena. Ludvig Collijn, among other Scandinavian masters, gave the opening its name.

Here are the key features of the Scandinavian Defense:

- It is an unavoidable opening. As soon as black plays 1...d5, white has to enter it and has no other choice.
- The Scandinavian is an opening in which patterns, plans and ideas matter much more than theoretical lines, so with experience, you can improve greatly.
- It is a counterattacking opening. Black obliges to have less space and worse development for a superior structure which often enables him to counterattack in the middlegame or in the endgame.
- White has a lead in development and has to play energetically in order to prove his advantage before black manages to consolidate, castle and develop fully.
- Black’s main attacking ideas revolve around the semi open d file and the overextended d pawn.
- Black is very often forced to give up the bishop pair and plays with knight and bishop or two knights versus two bishops.
- Black has a very solid pawn structure, just like in the Caro Kann, with pawns on e6 and c6 and without a single weakness.
- The positions are most often static and white has a hard time opening them up; he has to look for aggressive breaks.
- Black loses time for development by bringing his queen out too early, but compensates for that with his structure.
- Because of the d4 pawn, white has more space in the center, but it’s not an advantage unless the space is used to restrain the black pieces or open the position up.
- Furthermore, a space advantage always comes with a downside – weakening of squares. Overextending is always weakening.
- White’s main break in the position is d4-d5. Opening the position would highlight white’s lead in development and the bishop pair. It also breaks open the solid Caro-Kann structure.
- f4-f5 is another idea, looking to break at the e6 pawn, as well as piece sacrifices on e6.

In the rest of the series, I will be covering the three main variations of the Scandinavian in depth.

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