What are some "weird openings" that are still playable, in the sense that you are not in any big disadvantage and there may even be a few advantages to it, or the game is just equal. To put it in another way, openings that someone could play against an oponent of roughly the same skill and still draw the game or even win.
I know that its not recommended to use stockfish in openings but I tried running stockfish 13 on 1. a3 e5 and it says to be roughly equal, at some depths(around 30) it even gives a 0.1 advantage for white but then it comes back to roughly 0 and keeps fluctuating a little bit.
If you play something like a3 all you're doing is planning to transpose to a normal opening later on where the move a3 will be useful, like a Reversed Najdorf or Reversed Benoni or any number of openings where a3+b4 is an idea. But even then, having played a3 tips your hand.
a3 isn't any sort of specific opening unto itself that has unique ideas or anything wacky to recommend it. At best you'll annoy your opponent for the first 5 moves where he has to play standard setup moves while he waits to see what your plan is. What you're mostly going to see is folks playing their White opening with colors reversed because a3 does absolutely nothing to challenge the center or contest their opening plans.
If you want to play rare or weird openings that are playable, you can, but you have to actually build a proper repertoire. At the top level, though, people are going to be able to figure them out over the board even if they're caught by surprise. Most weird openings have at least a handful of lines where White has been thought to be clearly better, or Black has been able to force equality, that scare GMs off of playing them. If you want to play them you need an answer for those lines.
Or, you could just let Simon Williams convince you that the Danish gambit wins 80% of games and is totally respectable because Magnus Carlsen played it in a blitz game once. That's what most amateurs do.
There are over 1000 known chess Opening variations, including the Sokolsky Opening, the Mexican defense, Desprez Opening, Sodium Attack.... they all have Ideas behind them....
There are a near-unlimited number of ways to begin the game but only about 100 of them are actually respectable and worthy of a repertoire. The rest are either one-trick ponies where there's an opening trap you hope people fall for and if they don't it's just worse, or some weird stuff that Tony Miles played once that authors will desperately try to insist is just as playable as the main lines using extensive computer analysis when it's just not.
What you need is 3 different openings:
Something against e4 -- there are about a dozen different options to choose from
Something against d4 -- far more options here (why I stopped playing QG)
Something with White. If you play e4/d4/c4 you will have to learn how to take down all the different Black defenses. If you play some sort of system then you will hit a ceiling at around 1800 where you can't beat anyone high-rated and have to go back and learn the e4/d4/c4 stuff from scratch.
@CarpathianBulldog The top players play "systems" openings all the time. That's a ridiculous statement.
I think the hedgehog is playable.
@watermelonbiscuit it is exceedingly rare to see anyone above 2600 ELO play any sort of system opening because they are too predictable, too well-known, and too easy to equalize against.
They will play them as surprise weapons but that is it.
But the main point is that if you just play a system opening, above 2000 ELO everyone will know how to equalize against it and you'll be stuck because you don't know how to play anything else.
@CarpathianBulldog (1) why are you conflating "weird" openings with "system" openings?
(2) the better chess player can play whatever absurd opening he wants -- even at the highest level -- and he will still beat the inferior player.
For example:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bcv8scc440 My opinion ever opening is weird and playable
Maybe not h4 and a4 but alot are
