GMTonyKosten wrote on 02/14/09 at 15:32:45:

I've just uploaded an updated version in playable eBook form.

Yes, the Hungarian defence I what I tried to make playable for White, but evidently Stefan Bücker had more success than I!
If I meet someone at my level I just play 4.h4 g4 5.Ne5 and follow Bücker's variation (he recommends 9.d4 against the Hungarian defence).
If I meet someone who has clearly prepared this variation or I need to win at all cost, I have a few back up variations (4.d4 or 3.Bc4 to mention but two of them - if you search the internet you can find more ). Now if you play the Ruy, and Black wants to play the Marshall, what do you do? Wimp out with 8.d3, 8.h3 or maybe even 5.d3, Worrall or the Exchange variation. So many choices (and chances to write books on how to win with 1.e4...) and how many of them gives more than equality...I guess this is one reason to refrain from 2.f4. There are only 4-5 variations that White can safely choose from if Black wants to play 3...g5.
As for sharing variations, I am more than willing to discuss concrete variations.
Schaakhamster: Thx for the nice words. The articles were given in .cbv format to the subscribers and in text format to everyone else. Of course they were much more readable in chessbase format. I will admit that they were probably a bit to thick in variations (so I was myself guilty of what I dislike in the books - I guess nobody's perfect  ), but it was a format aimed at correspondence players, so I did not spend too much time combing the variations for long irrelevant endings and the like.
There were also 7 articles on the SMG, which I think is playable too, although there are lots of playable defences, which is perhaps the biggest problem (but isn't that the same if White plays the open Sicilian?).

I used to play KG when I had in tournament play +1 =3. 

As I have latley less and less time for chess I prefer to play Ruy Lopez because I want to broaden my chess horizon and also to play more logical and postional chess when I don't have to be 100% theoretically fit.

KG is my real love and I expect new Qualitychess book with great joy. But as Larry Kaufman describes, KG is my second nuke while the Ruy Lopez being the first and undisputed nuke.

I also noticed that I can play Ruy Lopez, aspecially Worrall with Qe2, with ease.

Zygalski wrote on 02/23/09 at 20:35:35:


not really, Federov plays the ruy and the italian game now, Gallagher the four knights and short plays about everything in the open games. Short has used it more sparsely then the other two who used it as on of  their main opening after e4 e5 from the beginning of the nighties till the beginning of the century. Westerinnen has used the bishop KG from the end of the eighties till the end of the nighties. He now plays the ruy. A quick search learns that anyone who has used the KG more then once or twice (but not much more) as GM the last few years it must be Aleksander Mista, a polish GM (hadn't heard of him before). 

Isn't one of the main reasons why Federov, Short, Gallagher et al no longer play the KG is that they rarely get the chance.
If I was a half-decent GM & was due to play Gallagher, I don't think I'd be too hasty to play 1...e5. 

rossia wrote on 02/21/09 at 07:32:13:


I wrote a number of articles on the King's Gambit. Some of them (in Correspondence Chess News) were meant as an inspiration to players with White. These were given away for free.
Then I wrote 4 articles for the New In Chess Yearbook series, for which I received a token renumeration. It is very easy to compare my articles with similar articles (by GMs) on the KG in these yearbooks and compare their usefullness.
What I wrote in my original post was that now I prefer to write my own opening books and keep them to myself. Then I:
1) save money
2) get coverage of the subvariations I prefer
3) have the learning experience of actually writing the stuff.

These days everyone has access to databases and computer engines, and if we need to buy books, then they have to contain more than ECO evaluation signs from ChessBase.

I am not a GM and never will be. The chess world is just like all other businesses, people look at grade point averages or rating numbers before they look at actual accomplishment in the field. Hence I stopped giving away stuff to the NIC people. But I never mind sharing with other KG addicts, and I think you will see that you get a lot more response in this forum from people who play the KG, than people who defend against it.
I have lost count how many people have said the KG is dead, its romantic days are dead, it's been refuted, etc etc.
But what are the exact variations that gives Black an advantage or dead equality. And could the evaluation of some of these variations not change next week.
Fedorov, Gallagher, Grischuk, Morozevich and Short all played the KG in the 1990ies and have more or less given it up, but as far as I know only Morozevich ("now I have grown up") and Gallagher ("use it more sparingly") has explained why.
My average opponent is not a GM, so why should I bother what GMs play. And why are chessplayers so hell-bent on following the fashion trends?
What if there are different kinds of chess players and different openings appeal to them? Wouldn't that be an interesting thought.... Perhaps then we could be without that incessant incantation about it being almost sacrilege to the rules of chess to play 2.f4.
Perhaps those of you who saw game 4 will agree that even the world's nr. 1 plays with different strength in different types of position (the Kasparov-Kramnik match also springs to mind).

To Schaakhamster:
Absence of proof does not equal proof of absence, is a basic tenet of logic.
In plain words: just because someone does not play a certain opening does not mean it is unplayable.
Now if you want to discuss why someone does not play it, that is another matter. But observing that only a few GMs play the KG, then suspecting that it is suspect, and confirming that assumption by the fact that only a few GMs play it, is called a circular argument. It too is void.
Statistics and averages are just as useless as proofs of general statements (i.e. the KG is refuted) they only apply to individuals (e.g. I make 75%... whence the KG is a good opening for me). I never stated anything else. For some people the KG is a terrible opening - you might even lose with White, and for some the KG is a good opening.
Today Kamsky is defending in the French and is not doing too well. If he loses, then I can also remember how NN lost to GM something in the French and Fischer said so, so the French must be refuted. Surely you can see how ridiculous this sounds.
As I have written elsewhere in this forum Davies, Marin et al wanted to save space and therefore chose 2...Bc5. But the point here was that the absence of 3...g5 from their books does not prove that it is not the best line against the KG. [Logic again]

When I played e5 the King's Gambit really bothered me because I would get into really (for me) choatic positions that I didn't like, and because I refused to believe that such an opening could be correct. I think it's important to note this because if you love the King's Gambit, it's really irrelevant if it's played by GM's or not. What matters is that you get the kind of games you like and your ability to absorb the ideas.

It was really telling when Gelfand admitted to a journalist that he had never faced the King's Gambit before (after Navara sprung it on him). Despite this, Gelfand achieved comfortable equality by simply recreating the theory either with a combination of thought and dim recollection, or simple GM insticts. I recall he did not play super-precisely, but nonetheless, solved all his problems. 

I also recall Fedorov losing pretty badly to Ivanchuk in a tournament where he had achieved very little with that opening. He now seems to play it only on occasion, preferring the Italian or something else. 

My guess is that GM's don't play it becuase there are too many methods for equalizing. If it were just a matter of one path to equality perhaps it would be possible to prepare something for the opponent to set him defensive problems over the board. But that doesn't really matter at our level where it's much harder to come up with the needed consistency move after move.

If you haven't seen it, I recommend taking a gander at the game:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1501148

I actually have read some stuff written by Dragonslayer - on the KG and on the Morragambit - and I can assure that he is very objective.