Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Scotch Gambit Part 1

This is Part 1 of a multiple-part series of articles.
Sorry for the delay- school gets in the way sometimes!
The Scotch Gambit is one of the lesser known weapons in the chess world. Most of the time it gets a transposition to either the Giouco Piano or the Two Knights, but if they do not transpose White gets a good game. A pure Scotch Gambit occurs when black plays 4... Bb4+:




From here, White castles, and gets an open position and piece play in exchange for the pawn.



The first option we will cover is 6. bxc3. Black's only option is to play Ba5.
6... Bc5 7. Bxf7+ Kxf7 8. Qd5+
6... Be7  7. Qd5 Nh6 8. Bxh6 0-0 9. Bxg7!

Here is what could happen after that (make sure go through the variations):


White could also play 6. 0-0, but I prefer 6. bxc3. Next time, I will go over the more popular and better options. As always, you can post all questions or constructive feedback in the comments!