Longer Chess Games #51 Larsen/Bird Opening 

meathead919 I second that for lowly players like us the long play games are most instructive

Birds

Until you master it, that's what he always says

eh too long, to get better at chess you need to try all openings imo

@@chrisiver8506 You should obviously know the general plans and ideas for all openings, but talking about serious play, you should stick to one and master it

@@ym276 That's fair, I know a 2100 who has played the london and the philidor his whole life with good results. Probably keeping the same openings in your repertoire is good, but branching out into new ones in tournament play will help your chess more than sticking to the same ones.

Hey! I can think of two reasons, however take these with a grain of salt as I'm a mediocre player at best. (i) Black is likely to play 1... e5 as White is not taking the center immediately. Ba3 seems horrible to me then as you spend 2 moves to immediately trade off your Bishop for Black's undeveloped one on f8. In fact, in many lines Black will spend several moves to get his f8 Bishop to c6 to trade it off for White's great Bishop on b2. Thus, playing 2. Ba3 just makes Black's life easy. (ii) One of the key points of the Larsen opening is the control over the dark d4 and e5 squares. Without his great dark-squared Bishop, White cannot do this and Black will likely be better. During the whole game Simon kept preventing Black from playing e5. Without a Bishop on b2, e5 would be unstoppable and Black breaks through in the center.