Bongcloud Attack

The Bongcloud Attack, also called the Bongcloud Opening, arises after 1. e4 e5 2. Ke2. It has no positional justification. The king forfeits castling rights for no reason, stands on the square the f1-bishop and queen need, develops nothing and does nothing to contest the center. The mock rationale is that White is getting ready for the endgame early. Engines rate Black clearly better, and in online play Black wins nearly two games in three.

Black needs no special preparation; normal development is enough. The most common reply is 2...Nc6, followed by 2...Nf6, which attacks e4 at once and is where Black scores best. 2...d6 is a quieter option, and engines also like 2...d5, opening the center while the white king still sits on the e-file. Black's simplest course is to develop quickly and open lines, while White spends the following moves untangling the kingside pieces trapped behind the king.

The name is usually traced to the Chess.com user Lenny_Bongcloud, who opened every game this way from 2008 with little success, though it is also read as a cannabis joke implying that only an intoxicated player would take the move seriously. In 2010 Andrew Fabbro published Winning with the Bongcloud, a parody of opening repertoire books. The label has since spread to other openings in which the king moves on the second turn, such as 1. f3 followed by 2. Kf2.

Hikaru Nakamura brought the opening to a wide audience, streaming on a fresh Chess.com account where he played nothing else and reached a 3000 rating. He also used it in elite online events, against Levon Aronian, Wesley So and Jeffery Xiong among others. On 15 March 2021, at the Magnus Carlsen Invitational, Carlsen opened 1. e4 e5 2. Ke2 against Nakamura, who replied 2...Ke7; after 3. Ke1 Ke8 4. Ke2 Ke7 5. Ke1 Ke8 6. Ke2 Ke7 the game was drawn by repetition, both players having already qualified for the knockout stage. In November 2022 Jan-Krzysztof Duda, 3–0 down to Nakamura in the Chess.com Global Championship finals, tried 1. e3 and 2. Ke2 in an in-person rapid game, the first such instance among elite players to count toward FIDE ratings, and lost.