The chessgames.com stats for King's Gambit Accepted give White a very slight edge in winning percentage while King's Gambit Declined has a much more lopsided winning percentage for White.
Those are pretty good stats. Why isn't the King's Gambit more popular?
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You play with en passant right?
47%+18%+31.5%= 96.5%?
Who wins the other 3.5%?
At the very top level of chess 31.5% chance of winning really is a lot for Black, especially when coupled with 18% chance that Black will draw.
Most GMs inherently dislike gambit openings because they're too risky...you either win or lose, there's no in-between. They prefer an opening which gives White a small chance to win, a very large chance to draw, and no chance for Black to win.
Also keep in mind the trickle-down effect--amateur players typically like to use the same openings as the big boys, which means a lot of Ruy Lopez and Sicilian. If Magnus Carlsen started suddenly using the Center Game, you can bet the popularity of that opening would blow up overnight.
White puts himself at an inherent disadvantage with this opening--there are a number of ways in which Black can get a good and essentially even game, so by playing KG, White is engaging in a lot of risk with a low chance for reward.
Database stats are not a good gauge of anything since a lot of the King's Gambit, Center Game, etc games on chessgames.com were played back in the 19th century with opening lines that have since been refuted.
It's a good opening for fun, if you are a tactical player you can play it. And of course a very good opening in blitz. But you won't get any advantage if your opponent knows how to play, and you have to learn a lot of theory to play it well. It is a dangerous opening for both sides, and that's why GMs don't want to deal with it.
The King's Gambit isn't a good opening at all. White gives up a pawn and weakens his king side for no compensation. KGA in particular is one of the weakest possible openings for White. I can't understand why anyone over 1300 would use this opening.
Refuted? Not at all. It's one of the more aggressive openings you can play and development is a fair tradeoff for the loss of a pawn. Use KG if you like wide-open tactical chess instead of a long, draggy positional struggle. As someone who finds tactical chess more fun than positional games, and claiming the KGA is refuted is quite patently untrue.
I have had great success with the KGA especially in blitz where attacking chances outweigh minute material advantages. Last one I played had me mating Black in 18 moves.
Were there errors? Of course. But the opportunity that pressured Black into these errors flowed from the attacking opportunities of the KGA. There are enough GM and IM games to substantiate or refute the KGA, so I see it as a matter of preference rather than an absolute.
The fact is that if you're a 2000 or lower player, any major opening that grandmasters of the 20th century played with success is playable. Bobby Fischer wrote his "King's Gambit is Busted" article out of butthurt after Spassky licked him with it. If Fischer could lose to the King's Gambit, anyone under 2000 OTB can certainly lose to it, even with Fischer's opening line.
Take openings like the Four Knights and Scotch Game which were all-but extinct since WWI and completely refuted until Kasparov and others revived them in the 90s.
Most of those are 19th century or amateur games. If you look at 2400+ games from recent masters, (pic related), black wins more than white.
Are you the same retard from the other day's thread? The one who couldn't come up with an answer as to things like why the Slav and the Sicilian are popular? GMs do play openings that are "dangerous for both sides". But they play ones that are much, much stronger than the King's Gambit, because they're actually good at the game.
In which Fischer had a clear advantage until the 26th move with 26...Rf8. Nobody contends Spassky got an opening advantage in the Mar Del Plata game.
it's probably not refutable but there are also not many arguments for playing it either. there are other ways for white to get an equal game with less risks of getting into a worse position.
Openings like the Slav Defense allow you to draw if so desired. Most gambit openings don't.
The King's Gambit at master level play has a higher draw percentage than e4 in general.
No matter how many Bronsteins or Spasskys or Polgars use the King's Gambit, it doesn't make it not a crazy dangerous opening.
All right OP, if you think the King's Gambit is so great, prove it works.
>Take openings like the Four Knights and Scotch Game which were all-but extinct since WWI and completely refuted until Kasparov and others revived them in the 90s.
Neither of those openings are as risky as KG, they died off simply because they rapidly lead to a simplified draw/boring endgame. The Ruy Lopez is the most consistently popular e4 e5 opening at the top levels of chess because it offers a degree of complexity the rest don't have.
Let's talk about all those brilliant King's Gambit games that Anderssen and Morphy won back in the 1800s using opening lines that are considered a joke nowadays. Yessum, chess strategy has come a long way since 1860. That's why KG died off as positional play started to become popular in the last third of the 19th century.
Morphy usually played the Dutch Defense if he was Black and White opened with d4. He also played a lot of King's Gambits and Evans Gambits. However, his biggest contribution to the game was playing 3...a6 in the Ruy Lopez. :^)
To quote David Bronstein, "The King's Indian Defense is more dangerous for Black than the King's Gambit is for White, yet no one thinks twice about using the King's Indian Defense."
It is, but then simply playing Black at all gives you an inherent disadvantage as White gets to decide how the game will begin. Myself, I used to use the King's Indian quite a bit. I did think twice about it. My second thought came after I resigned: "Why did I play that damned opening!"
I use the King's Indian a lot and I prefer e4 openings, but I just can't bring myself to use the King's Gambit for some reason. Good point though that White does get an inherent advantage.
King's Gambit isn't a sound opening gameplay-wise, its real value is psychological. White hopes to scare Black enough into blundering the game away. Sometimes it works and even GMs have been known to fall for it, for example Fischer at Mar Del Plata.
If I'm playing Black and White does 2. f4, I almost never take the pawn. For some reason, I get unnerved by the idea of KGA.
Declining the pawn loses too. 1. e4 e5 2. f4 d6? and White dies an obese ranting /pol/tard in Iceland 40 years later.
OP, why are you replying to yourself over and over? The poster count is still 4, and your style of writing is overwhelmingly predominant.
I'm pretty green at chess, used to play chess club in high school which was more or less just pitting untrained talent against untrained talent. I'm at the point where I need to start studying openings and responses in order to up my game.
What do you recommend for someone moving from beginner to intermediate?
I recommend that you stop samefagging, kill yourself, and ask the devil what openings he plays.
I posted the thing about en passant way upthread. Why are you even lurking if you are completely uninterested in participating in the thread? Go away.
>The poster count is still 4
???
If you're actually serious and not just sucking Bill Wall's cock; what sort of game do you usually play, and how much time/energy do you have to study openings? If you don't for the latter question, you want something with relatively few branches; I'd recommend something like the Reti for white and the French for black.
But really, what kind of game do you like to play/are good at? Do you like multiple branching variations? Long deep variations? Sharp vs dull? Positional vs tactical? Are you into endgames?
Also, would you be up to a short game so I can get a small gauge of your strength?
Honestly, King's Gambit isn't as bad as its reputation suggests. White pressures the center immediately and has plenty of open lines for development. The White king isn't as endangered as a lot of people believe, in fact Bird's Opening is more dangerous in that regard (in the King's Gambit at least White prepares to castle quickly).
The real point that has to be made about KG is that you can't play it the way Morphy did except against sub-1300 opponents. Against anyone stronger, you need to be more careful and scientific (see ). I mean, Fischer continued to use KG even after claiming he'd refuted it and of course he only said the opening was busted out of irritation that Spassky beat him.
Should add...right after writing "The King's Gambit--Busted", Fischer used the opening and won in the US Chess Championship. It's not the best opening for White, but in the right hands can be playable (also note that Fischer's 3...d3 is very seldom used in practice).
King's Gambit isn't the most sound opening around, but it can be fun once in a while and certainly a welcome break from the endless Sicilian and Ruy Lopez games.
Really, the Falkbeer Countergambit is the best answer to 3...f4.
I started out thinking that blitz was really neat, and so I play very much to the center. I almost invariably move the King's Pawn up two.
>what kind of game do you like to play/are good at?
I don't play against good opponents consistently enough to gauge my own skill.
>multiple branching variations
I feel that would be easy to memorize and modify.
>Long deep variations
Probably something I'd follow next.
>Sharp vs dull
Idk.
>Positional vs tactical
Idk.
>endgames
So far my endgames are so strongly varied because of wildly inconsistent early to midgames that I don't know what's good.
>short game
I've got a few minutes, sure.
IDK, but in my King's Gambit games as White, I win about 80% of the time. Not bad for a refuted opening that gives White an apparent handicap.
Yeh but Fischer only ever played the King's Gambit four times in a serious match. The first one was the game with Spassky when he was only 17. In that game, Spassky was White, so he decided to use KG, not Fischer. The other three games Fischer was White and in all of them he used 4. Bc4 (the King Bishop's Gambit). Of the three games, one was a blindfold sim in 1964 that Fischer lost.
My database shows 16 Fischer KG games with a record of 14-1-1. Keep in mind that opponents rarely had a chance to use the KG against him because when playing Black, he almost always answered 1. e4 with 1...c5 or 1...e6.
4. Bc4 IMO is preferable to 4. Nf3 simply because it's not used as much and there's fewer prepared lines available that Black has to work with. The main reason why GMs don't favor the King's Gambit is simply because it's hard to draw with it and most GMs want to be able to draw the game if Black doesn't make an obvious mistake they can exploit.
Well, admittedly I can only gauge so much from one game where I took the fore very quickly, but yeah, beginner level skill, moderate to high aggressiveness, center focused.
Personal recommendations for white would be Italian games (e4,e5,Nf3,Nc6,Bc4 variations), but of course you can't control what your opponent plays after e4, I myself tend to throw Najdorf Sicilians, which means that if you want to get serious about it playing e4, you need to at least brush up against common variations you might see, and that starts with the Sicilian, as the most played response to e4. You should also look at the French (e4,e6), Petrov (e4, e5, Nf3, Nf6), and Caro-Kann (e4, c6) albeit briefly.
As black, I'd honestly recommend Sicilians if you want center control and tactics, but that's coming from a guy who plays the Sicilian against every e4 player he sees.
But if you really want to go broad rather than deep, and at your skill level, I'd recommend the Zurich 1953 book by Bronstein. It's not an opening book per se, but it will give you access to a large variety of games and not just opening theory, but the middlegame theory that the openings lead to, and it should be accessible for a player of around your skill level.
Also, and I'm not trying to be offensive here, but I would recommend some just general study before you really go in depth into openings. Not even lines, but just general opening principles; think about how you're going to control the center and develop your pieces quickly. In our game, I gained basically 2 free moves kicking your queen around, and it ending up on d3 hampered the development of your dark square bishop. You don't bring the queen out that early, or it will cost you, start with knights and bishops, and ideally, don't move any of them more than once until they're all moved at least once. But that's more just general playing strength stuff, not openings; I would put off hard core opening study until you've gained a few hundred ELO points.
>41.2% of GM level King's Gambits are draw
>The King's Gambit is hard to draw with
>That's roughly on par with the Closed Sicilian, which is played all the time.
>Clearly, GM's don't want to play the King's gambit because it's too decisive.
>I'd recommend the Zurich 1953 book by Bronstein. It's not an opening book per se, but it will give you access to a large variety of games and not just opening theory, but the middlegame theory that the openings lead to, and it should be accessible for a player of around your skill level.
Generally speaking, it's better to use chess books written in the last 20 years since old shit like that Bronstein book will tend to contain variations/lines that have been refuted or fallen out of use.
Kk. I'll do some study.
White: Italian games, maybe French, Petrov, and Caro-Kann
Black: Sicilian
Seems like a good back and forth. I'll definitely read Bronstein.
Yep, the queen cost me heavily, and I knew I was sunk when you wound up a bishop ahead because of those move sinks. My knight game is highly underdeveloped.
I'm not recommending it as an opening book. I'm recommending it as a general guide book. (And as an aside, the King's Indian and Najdorf Sicilians are still very popular). But Bronstein will give advice and variations as to how an opening is good or bad, what sort of position each side is looking to get out of the opening, and will give a very broad spectrum of games, with very different styles over the board.
For someone feeling their way along and not even sure what kind of game they like, it's an invaluable tool, and far more so than a modern opening book.
That makes it all the more interesting how Fischer played e5 in that 1960 Spassky game when he was a committed Sicilian Defense man. Perhaps he did it for surprise value? I guess Spassky didn't buy it because he immediately charged in with f4. Or even more oddly how Fischer continued using King's Gambit after writing how it was busted.
That is correct--Fischer usually always played the Sicilian or French Defense if he was Black and he got an e4 opening, the Nadjorf being a particular favorite of his. As to why he did 1...e5 in the Spassky game? He probably thought Spassky was expecting a Nadjorf and wanted to avoid his preparations for that. Most likely he never expected 2. f4.
In those other games where Fischer did 3. Bc4 on the White side of King's Gambit, that was avoiding his own d6 "refutation", but he may have not really believed it was a bust anyway.
KG is too complicated. There are many ways even for GMs to go wrong. So it is not about sound or unsound, but about who can play it better (and he who is more prepared for it). In lower level, once you master it, no doubt there will be a lot more players who can not withstand it than those who can "refute" it.
>or fallen out of use
Wouldn't it be to my advantage to use something that wasn't seen often when I hit a certain ELO?
One time Fischer faced a Latvian Gambit in a simul. He won, but afterwards was thoroughly shaken up and said "That was a close game; I barely survived. I hope I never see a Latvian Gambit again any time soon."
I looked that up. It gave me a boner.
Some wiseass once played Damiano's Defense against Fischer in a simul as well; that game ended in a draw.
Since we're talking about King's Gambit what do you think of the Vienna Game?
Vienna Game is probably the most bland e4 e5 opening there is. 2. Nc3 threatens nothing and there's a reason nobody used this opening much after the 19th century. It's sound and harms nothing, but it doesn't give you anything either.
Not even a chess player, but as a general approach to competitive games, you shouldn't be working on tactics that rely on your opponent's incompetence/unfamiliarity rather than your own strength. That can certainly work up to a point, but as soon as you get far enough up the ladder that your tricks stop working, you're going to have to readjust to playing with the fundamentals you should have been practicing from the beginning. That's not to say that you can't take advantage of opponent's weaknesses or even use trick-play, (since that happens at even the top levels of any game) but cheese will only get you so far up the ladder, and if you've been using it as a crutch, you'll be stuck there.
Well yes, but all else being equal it's an edge. The only problem is that it might bump me up past where my skills would have taken me too quickly with a more conventional approach.