Andrew Martin and “Super knight?”: When d5 Becomes a Time Investment for the Club Player

A Tuesday evening at a chess café on Bạch Đằng Street, Da Nang. A twenty-one-year-old student, rated 1,850, has spent three weeks copying the Najdorf branch of the Sicilian into a thick notebook. His opponent, a man past sixty, pushes the d7-d5 pawn on the very first move. The student freezes, looks at the board, then at the clock. Fourteen minutes left. His notebook has no page for this position. The game ends on move thirty-one; the older man wins. Not with a brilliant combination, but with an infuriating steadiness: every piece on the right square, every move on the right beat, not one moment of hesitation. The student leaves the table with the familiar feeling of having lost a game he was never allowed to play. I sat at the next table, recording every move. That was the first time in years I saw so clearly something opening analysts rarely say out loud: most club games are not decided by who knows the deeper line, but by who spends less thinking time. The Scandinavian Defense, also called the Center Counter, begins with 1.e4 d5. Black pushes a pawn to the central square at once, invites White to take it, and recaptures with the queen: 2.exd5 Qxd5. The queen then retreats to a5, d6 or d8 depending on the school. This opening has appeared in serious games since the nineteenth century, tied to the names of Nordic players, and has never vanished from club events. It has also never become a main weapon at the very highest level. Recently, a sixty-minute video by IM Andrew Martin was released into the chess content market. Its title: “Super knight?”. This is an opening-instruction product, not a game, not a tournament. Andrew Martin is a British International Master, an author of many opening works, and is recognized by FIDE at the FIDE Senior Trainer level — a formal coaching qualification, not a playing title. It must be said from the outset: this is a commercial product, and every claim attached to it should be read with a buyer's eye, not a fan's. The promotion promises three things: an opening that is simple and very solid, a position where White can hardly obtain an advantage, and the suggestion that even Magnus Carlsen has used the idea to win games. All three statements are true to some degree, and all three are pushed past their limit to some degree. My job, as usual, is to separate what belongs to the board from what belongs to the billboard. Start with the board. The Scandinavian is a complete system, not a trick. Black is not trying to seize an advantage; Black is trading for simplicity. After 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qa5, White keeps a sliver of space and development, but that edge is small, stable and — this is the crux — extremely hard to convert. In chess, having an advantage and converting an advantage are two different stories. The advertisement talks about the first. The club player cares about the second. At club level, the memorization load is the real currency. A 1,800-rated player must weigh learning fifteen more moves of the Najdorf against keeping enough mental health for the middlegame. The Scandinavian answers this question with a blunt offer: Black gives up a little theoretical ground in exchange for the right not to remember much. That is a reasonable trade, and it is not new. The London System does the same for White. The Caro-Kann does the same thing more subtly. But here I have to be direct. The claim that “White can hardly get an advantage” overstates the case. Engine analysis shows that after the main line, White still holds a small, low-risk pull. The honest question is not whether White has an advantage, but whether White has the skill to turn it into a win against a patient opponent. At club level, the answer is usually no. But that is a statement about players, not about the opening — and the advertisement has blended the two together. The second thing to note: the video runs sixty minutes. One hour is enough for a single thematic idea. The title “Super knight?” suggests that idea is a knight move — perhaps re-routing the knight to an active outpost, rather than the wandering-queen story that is the cliché about the Scandinavian. If so, it is a good pedagogical choice: one idea, one hour, one impression. But the buyer should understand that they are buying a chapter, not a book. Sixty minutes does not cover the whole Scandinavian for both colours. On Carlsen. I have spent many evenings rewatching his games in faster formats, and I can say this: Carlsen uses 1...d5 as a surprise punch, not as a pillar of his arsenal. At the 2700 level, the main defences remain 1...e5, 1...c5, 1...e6 and 1...c6. The fact that a super-grandmaster occasionally picks a low-theory system in a blitz game does not prove that the system suits a club player. Those are two different questions, and welding them together is a familiar marketing move: borrow the credibility of the best to sell a product made for ordinary players. Based on my experience following matches, I always check three numbers before trusting an opening claim: the engine match rate, the ACPL, and the actual number of games in the database at the relevant rating level. This video provides none of the three. Not because they are hidden, but simply because the product-advertisement genre does not need them. A good teaching resource can exist without them. A wise buyer, however, cannot. There is another trap I want to flag, because it concerns the whole chess-analysis industry today. Opening databases are full of win-rate percentages, and people read them like prophecy. “White scores 54% in this line” — but who generated that 54%, at what rating, under what time control, and across how many games in which human factors such as fatigue or time pressure intervened? Heat maps and percentages have become a new form of divination, obscuring the player's real role inside the tactical system. For the same reason, the claim “Carlsen used it” is not data; it is a story. Stories have power, but they do not replace a denominator. Place this product in its actual market. Chess's transfer window is not made of player contracts; it is the flow of ideas between coaches, authors and platforms. A transfer is a symphony; the number is only a note. A sixty-minute video sits inside the opening-course catalogue of a subscription platform, where marginal economics favours niche products with a long tail. The Scandinavian is such a subject: it never explodes, but it never runs out of searchers. Its stubborn persistence at club level and on online servers is driven by low memorization cost, not by theoretical standing. Drawing back the curtain on speed, I meet a whole generation running. This time, that generation runs not on asphalt but on sixty-four squares. The transmission mechanism here is simple: education leads to adoption, adoption leads to practice, practice leads to a rising number of 1...d5 games on online servers. There is no measurable effect on elite chess, sponsorship or public image from a single product. This is a small, steady contribution to the instructional-content economy, not an industry-shaking event. And here is my contrarian angle. The strongest piece in the Scandinavian is not the knight. It is the clock. The entire value of this system lies in the fact that it frees up cognitive budget — the opening-study hours an amateur can afford. In an era when every opponent has an engine in their pocket, the real competitive edge of a club player no longer lies in remembering more, but in allocating attention better. The Scandinavian is a decision about attention allocation, disguised as a decision about opening choice. This leads to a counter-intuitive conclusion. If your goal is to gain an opening advantage, the Scandinavian is a poor choice. If your goal is to reach the middlegame with an intact clock and a clear head, it may be one of the best choices available. Same opening, two goals, two opposite conclusions. Most opening arguments on social media happen because the two sides never tell each other which goal they are playing for. Time control also matters. A low-theory system that is solid at classical club pace does not automatically grant an edge at rapid or blitz. In blitz, where White's small pull can be erased by a single split-second error, the Scandinavian's “solidity” loses much of its meaning — and at the same time, it exerts no pressure that forces the opponent to err. This is a point promotional material tends to skip, because it does not sell. One more note on pedagogy. A sixty-minute video built around a single idea can outperform a three-hour course spanning every branch, because it creates one memory that can be named and reused. The title “Super knight?” is an example of that naming technique: it turns a move into a label in memory. For a learner, labels matter more than variation tables. For a high-level player, the reverse is true. One product, two uses. What about the FIDE Senior Trainer credential? It is a legitimate and valuable signal, but it must be read correctly. It is a coaching rank, not a playing rank. It tells you the presenter has been trained to teach, not that he is at peak strength. For a product aimed at club players, this is a sensible, low-risk pairing. I have followed several of Martin's opening works; his instructional voice is clear, structured and suited to this audience. But a good coaching certificate does not turn an average system into a superior one, and should not be read that way. People talk about speed, but I find time. In that game at the Bạch Đằng café, the sixty-year-old man did not win because he understood the Scandinavian more deeply. He won because he did not have to think. The student lost not because he was the weaker player, but because he had spent his entire attention budget on an opening branch his opponent had no intention of entering. That is the lesson a sixty-minute video can deliver, and also its limit. It can teach you an idea; it cannot teach you calm when the clock shows fourteen minutes. The stands are empty, but the podcast taught me to listen to the game from the inside — and inside a club game, the loudest sound is not the pieces, but the ticking. From the sandpit runway to the virtual arena — the homeland of sport has no borders, and neither does chess. An opening is never just a sequence of moves; it is a decision about where you want to spend your life. The question I leave you with is not whether the Scandinavian is solid. The question is: which opening are you spending your attention budget on, and who persuaded you to do it?