On Mar 22, 8:13*pm, help bot wrote:
On Mar 22, 7:45 pm, Albert wrote:

In Reuben Fine's 'The Ideas Behind Chess Openings' page 7 he wrote:

'OPENINGS WITH 1 P-K4, P-K4

Both White's and Black's initial moves are perfectly natural and
normal: both assist development and affect vital central squares.
As long as Black can retain symmetry, White can lay no claim to an
advantage. Consequently the task is to compel the defender to give up
his strong center positions, in other words to abandon his P at K4.
White can achieve this aim only by playing P-Q4.'

Why?

* GM Fine was mistaken, for not only did he
err in claiming White has no advantage in
having /the first move/, but he seems to have
forgotten all about p-f4-- an alternative way to
attack e5 pawn.

Our Greg returns to his usual modus operandi, which involves
ignorance of the book in question, and disconnecting mouth from brain.
Actually Fine devoted several pages to the King's Gambit in that book.
If Greg had troubled to read pages 58-61 of Idea's Behind the Chess
Openings he would have seen that Fine hardly forgot about "p-
f4" [sic].

* Here, he also seems to reject so-called
hyper-modern strategy altogether, in favor of
classical.

Utter nonsense. Ideas Behind the Chess Openings devotes 5 pages to
Alekhine's Defense (1.e4 Nf6), one page to Nimzovitch's Defense (1.e4
Nc6), 27 pages to the Nimzo-Indian (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4), 16
pages to the King's Indian and Grünfeld, and 10 pages to the Réti-
Catalan -- hypermodern openings all.
However, a discussion of "hyper-modern strategy" is not very
appropriate to the chapter on symmetrical king pawn openings. Guess
what kind of opening Fine was discussing when he wrote the paragraph
the OP cites above? For most of us, the heading "OPENINGS WITH 1 P-K4,
P-K4" serves as a fairly strong hint, but our Greg goes his own way.

* If you don't want to have to deal with all the
dogmatic commentary and mis-statements,
just go with a book by one of the many
modern writers, like say, Yasser Seirawan.

If you want to know what GM Fine actually wrote, read the book,
rather than what help-bot imagines its contents to be.

(Okay, I'm showing my age here;

Oh, you're showing much more than that, Greg.