TopNotch wrote on 10/16/21 at 22:36:03:

For this particular hiccup there is a remedy: the Delayed Evans Gambit. Nothing special of course, but at least saner than the Hillbilly Attack.

katar wrote on 08/20/21 at 17:33:31:


I forgot to mention that GM Gambits 1.e4 (2021) also lacks a convincing answer to: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5  4.0-0 d6!? forcing White to play sane chess. LOL (The life of a Gambiteer is filled with so many hiccups). 

Like many of GingerGM's products the GM GAMBITS course is like a Chinese buffet: there are items that should be avoided, others that can be adopted sparingly, and possibly a couple hidden delights that are better than their appearance.

My main complaint is the course is imbalanced.  350 lines for the Max Lange (way too many for a line with negligible surprise value where Black equalizes without drama in the main 5...Nxe4 variation); 140 lines for the Sicilian Wing (about right); 95 lines for the New Milner-Barry vs. French (also about right); and 45 lines for the Caro-Kann Hillbilly (ugh).  Part 2 covered h-pawn hack attacks against the Pirc-Modern where White can at least get a reasonable/equal game if Black is accurate, a risky all-or-nothing system against the Scandinavian, and a highly questionable 3.Qf3 system against the Alekhine.

The French advance gambit appeals to me most.  GM Jesse Kraai discussed it in a Youtube video ("how to make french players squirm").  The gambit seeks positional compensation and non-standard Anti-French themes.  At less than 100 lines it does not look not too heavy.   

The Sicilian Wing Gambit is a fine choice considering the course objective and the workload of 140 lines.  The Sicilian Wing Gambit was well-regarded by legends like Marshall, Capablanca, and Bronstein - which to me reflects that it is positionally well-motivated since White gets a long-term central pawn majority (turning the tables on the Sicilian which is designed to achieve exactly that).  Black can obtain an edge but White often has the easier play with the pawn center.

The other options are less attractive because they seem to be based on immediate wishful tricks without a sound long-term foundation.  The marketing and Simon's enthusiasm based on bravado are over the top and ridiculous.  But Chessable makes its money based on the science of consumer buying, uh I meant to say, the science of chess learning.

If forced to choose between Gambiteer by Nigel Davies and the Ginger book, I would prefer Ginger against Sicilian, French, and Scandinavian, but Nigel against everything else.  Both cover the Sicilian Wing Gambit, but Nigel's coverage in that chapter was uncharacteristically bad in my opinion.

Eric Rosen has had a number of fine attacking wins in the Stafford Gambit at blitz, and on Lichess.org it's scored quite well for Black, so maybe it's good in the right hands as a blitz weapon.  When his opponents find one of the several "refutations", he ends up a pawn down for not much, but that's often just a slight disadvantage in blitz.  But it's telling that he doesn't use the line in serious tournament games, like at the recent Las Vegas tournament where he preferred to defend a slightly offbeat line of the Scotch Game.  I think in tournament games you run the risk of having many depressing losses where you never really had much for the pawn, and unlike at blitz, you have to suffer for quite some time.

Like the Halloween Gambit for White, it's one of those lines that I'm happy to try at blitz or in casual games from time to time for a bit of fun, but I'm having too much fun with the rather sounder gambits and attacking lines arising from the Two Knights Defence, the Ruy Lopez Modern Steinitz and the Scandinavian lines advocated by David Smerdon to make the Stafford a regular part of my repertoire.

Another line that can be a lot of fun in blitz is the Nakhmanson Gambit for White, 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Bc4 Nf6 5.0-0 Nxe4 6.Nc3?! (instead of 6.Re1 d5 7.Bxd5 Qxd5 8.Nc3 as discussed earlier).  White gets a strong attack after 6...dxc3 7.Bxf7+ Kxf7 8.Qd5+, followed by Re1 and then taking on e4.  The main problem with it is that Black can play 6...Nxc3 or 6...Nd6, and end up with an extra pawn for just half a pawn's worth of compensation.  Again, at blitz and in casual games this line can provide some players with a lot of fun, but in classical tournament chess it's too risky.

In contrast the anti-Lange lines with 5...Nxe4 6.Re1 d5 7.Bxd5 Qxd5 8.Nc3 are sound, the problem with them is rather that they're equal and that in practice Black scores well, and at higher levels it can be hard to create winning chances.

On a historical note, seeing (what is now called) the Stafford Gambit reminded of the bit on it in Tim Harding's 1973 book Counter Gambits:

After 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nxe5 Black can play, instead of the usual 3...d6, a move not mentioned by Keres, nor by Hooper in his study of the Petroff:  3...Nc6?!.  The main idea behind this is a version of the Legal trap: 4. Nxc6 (If 4. d4 Qe7! 5. Nxc6 Qxe4+ 6. Be2! with the edge to White) 4...dxc6 5. d3 Bc5 6. Bg5?? (6. Be2 is correct) 6...Nxe4!! and Black wins, since if 7. dxe4 Bxf2+ or 7. Bxd8 Bxf2+ 8. Ke2 Bg4 mate.

Yes, but I will say a couple of things in defense of Soltis. First, what he writes is generally factually correct, in a journalistic sense. The moves he gives happened, the results happened. It's like Wikipedia -- not 100% guaranteed to be true, but all factual and sourced (provided the contributors adhere to the Wikipedia standards). Second, if one tries to insist that Soltis needs to meet a higher research standard, then the rebuttal is he is not writing for that level. He is simply presenting the book moves for the lower two levels I mentioned before. If someone wants more, they will need to buy a different book, a much more expensive book.

Having said that, sometimes the mistakes in Soltis are entirely his fault. I have in mind a horrid blunder in his Tchigorin Defense book which was beneath a grandmaster. Beneath most club players actually. And he didn't get it from any game.

As for me, I didn't read Soltis because I trusted his analysis. I read Soltis because I knew other players would rely on it. But these days there aren't many points are to be found in out-preparing Soltis. Most players use databases and engines and don't even look at Soltis, so my methods also have to be different.

TopNotch wrote on 04/21/21 at 12:09:27:

This is of course correct. As Ehlvest repeatedly says in Grandmaster Opening Preparation, it all depends on your level.

Winning once in a while by catching someone in an opening they haven't seen before isn't too impressive, e.g. the recent Jones - So, New in Chess Classic 2021.
https://chessexpress.blogspot.com/2021/04/he-chose-poorly.html

Of course it's nice to win, and against a stronger opponent if we know it and they don't then we will take it. But the litmus test of any white opening is: If you play it repeatedly against equal-level opponents, how will your results be? And the answer will depend on your level.

• At a lower level players will avoid the book moves in a second game. They haven't looked at it in the meantime and they are afraid that you have.
• At a higher level players are more confident. For one thing they did look at it at home! That's one of the reasons they made it to the higher level. Here you will face the book moves, so if your opening is less than equal you are going to suffer.
• At a somewhat higher level, they will not just study the book, they will improve on it. This is a severe test for any opening. A "merely" equal opening can become quite unpleasant if your opponents are constantly making you think of new things at the board. It's very helpful if other strong players are also playing "your side" so you aren't alone against an army in the battle of new moves.
• I won't speak about what happens at the highest level. There are books about it, for example the aforementioned Ehlvest book.

I'm trying a new policy of not posting about openings without giving some moves. In 1996 I picked up Soltis (1996) Winning with the Giuoco Piano and the Max Lange Attack, and played through the whole thing to prepare for black. This was an ordinary professional thing to do, since I could count on white players to also be studying this "latest" theory.

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 
I usually play 3...Bc5 and found some ideas for black against Soltis there as well.
4.d4 exd4 5.O-O Nxe4 6.Re1 d5 7.Bxd5 
A 2000-player once tried 7.Nc3. He was surprised by 3...Nf6 because as mentioned he usually saw 3...Bc5 from me, but he was even more surprised that I knew more theory after 7.Nc3 than he did.
7...Qxd5 8.Nc3 Qa5 9.Nxe4 Be6 10.Neg5 O-O-O 11.Nxe6 fxe6 12.Rxe6 Bd6 13.Bg5 
A 1700-player once tried 13.Ng5 against me. Often when I ask lower-rated players why they do something like this, they will say that they knew the book move but wanted to try something different. I can't criticize this because I have sometimes done the same thing! If there is something you are wondering about, then play it against a strong player and your question will be answered. But if the answer is you are "afraid" to play the book move (see above) because your opponent might know more, then that's not good.
13...Rde8 
13...Rdf8 is the other move.
14.Qe1 Qxe1+ 15.Raxe1 Rxe6 
or 15...Kd7 16.Rxe8 Rxe8 17.Rxe8 Kxe8
16.Rxe6



Here Soltis continues 16...Kd7 17.Re4 Re8 18.Rxe8 Kxe8 19.Kf1 and suggests white is better in the ending, based on a correspondence game which white won. But he missed a tactical trick for black, played in a later correspondence game, and which nowadays you can easily find in the otb databases. 

Anyway back then I didn't have any million-games database. I went looking for an improvement the old-fashioned way, and thought of 16...Rf8!?, with the idea ...Rf5-c5! There is more to it than that, I did a little work on the position. It's equal of course. One nice thing is it's not as drawish as 16...Re8. I didn't have long to wait, and in 1997 I won a training game against a master.

Years later in 2003 I also won a blitz game with 16...Rf8 against another young master. I hesitated a few seconds over whether to "reveal" this idea in a blitz game, but since I rarely play the Two Knights anyway I figured a little "reputation" was more beneficial than a little secrecy. This blitz game shows I think how a little preparation goes a long way, since too many people just copy what someone else shows them.

Today I can see I was far from the first one to think of 16...Rf8, because the first game in the database is from 1994. That's before Soltis's book came out, so I guess Soltis also did not have a great database. At least he was clever enough to be looking at correspondence games.

MW wrote on 04/24/21 at 20:38:14:


Thanks. That works.

I tried a couple of the free "short and Sweet" books and was favorably impressed. There is plenty of good material for free, but I can see benefit to buying the complete version, when available.