I have taken a rather subversive approach to chess of late. Of course, firstly I need to acknowledge that I have lately also even taken to chess (!). My age in the Chess Universe is a grand total of two weeks as of today, and my baptism has been limited to a fairly reasonable number of games played via Chess24 in the same timespan. Thus, what better time to question a game-opening which some dispute has been around for at least a millennium if not more?
To be fair, I find that the bishop’s opening appeals deeply to my romantic nature of playing a sharp opening line. I usually use the opening to feint into a King’s Gambit if need be. However, in a bid to gain some rudimentary mastery, I was reading some literature and found that Bobby Fischer had developed a famed counter to the King’s Gambit: the legendary d6 pawn advance. However, I decided to trudge on and check for the possibilities of applying King’s Gambit as black!
For the record, forcing a King’s Gambit as black is an interesting opening line, having received quite a few victories from them. (Although this might be more due the avant-garde style of the opening combined with low experience among my opponents.) However, it does seem to appear particularly advantageous for one of the variations. And that is the Bishop’s opening. In fact, black will face huge losses if a very particular line is not played that I will elaborate below. Apart from this particular set of moves, all moves for black tend to be losing. I say this purely from experience, without crunching through Stockfish or similar chess engines.
So here are the set of moves against bishop’s opening that forces an immediate disadvantage for white. It’s what I call the Kings Counter Gambit. More erudite chess aficionados might find a more appropriate nomenclature, but I digress…
e4 e5
Bc4 f5!
Here, if white accepts the Gambit which he should because his position becomes worse on a decline with his development sent back to the troglodyte era.
exf5 Nf6 [necessary to block white Queen advance. Any other move and black loses greatly]
…here white plays a generic development piece. The more ambitious the better as we get to crush his ambitions in the very next move. Whatever white plays is immaterial as now black responds with d5! This does a lot of things. It makes black’s position very advanced, wresting central control and pushing the white bishop to retreat while also removing all threats apart from the e5 pawn on the King after a possible future King side castle.
Other variations including Qf3 or any other response instead of a direct acceptance of the Gambit ensures that Nf6 has to be played before fxe5. Then we can proceed similarly. And white Queen advance can be cut off by the e-file pawn supported by the Knight.
And there ladies and gents, is how to and probably the only place where Black can play King’s Gambit playing second, sacrifice a pawn and still gain overall. I love this particular variation and to the best of my knowledge, this is definitely not something played in tournaments. But that may due to a combination of Bishop’s opening and King’s Gambit being fairly uncommon even in white play. So a King’s Gambit with black might possibly be an unheard line. So best of luck in trying it out. I also welcome feedback on this particular opening variation.
On further reading, it has come to my notice that my proposed line is a deviation from the Latvian Gambit mainline. Alternately if the Bishop takes the Knight on rank 1, (an unwise move), we have the Calabrese Counter Gambit.
Aditya Guha 