How to CRUSH the Scholars's Mate
Having someone play the Scholar's mate against you can almost feel disrespectful. The annoying part is, you feel like you should be able to punish them, but it can be difficult. In this post, I'm going to run you through a crazy looking variation. It is only played by 1% of amateur players, but is one of the top engine lines, and what Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura likes to play. It involves an early f5 pawn push, and is a lot of fun!
Opening moves
The Scholars starts with the moves: 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5
This is an aggressive move, and a tempting response is to attack the queen. The problem is that the queen attacks your e5 pawn, so it is more important to defend that first. To do this, bring your knight out to c6. Your opponent will normally play bishop to c4 now, setting up a checkmate threat on f7. 2... Nc6 3. Bc4
Now we have to be careful to avoid this checkmate threat. To start, we are going to play g6, attacking the queen and blocking it's sight towards f7. The queen will almost always go back to f3, trying to checkmate us on f7 again. Now the best move to play, and only 1% of amateur players know this, is to play f5!
This move looks bad, but it is excellent if you know what you're doing. If white decides to take the pawn (which is a big mistake), you want to first jump your knight forward to d4, attacking the queen. When the queen moves, you can then play d5, attacking the bishop. Finally, when the bishop moves, you can recapture the pawn with your own light squared bishop. In this spot, you have the entire center controlled, better development then your opponent, and should have a great game from here.
If your opponent plays passive with either Ne2 or d3, I will show you the general setup to remember.
Developing your knight to f6 is the first move to threaten to win the e4 pawn. Your dark squared bishop normally belongs on g7 fianchettoed. You often want to jump your knight to a5 to trade off the light squared bishop so you can castle. You normally want to trade your f pawn for their e pawn, or push it forward to remove the tension. Lastly, you want to castle.
If you would like to see this opening in more detail, you can see my youtube video on the topic here