Thursday night, I got paired against a class A player who just returned to the board after a 30 year layoff. His playing skills were obviously rusty and I felt kinda bad that my gambit worked so well.
Lesson learned: This is why I switched many of my opening lines to gambit lines.
P.S. Finished reading Murray Chandler's How to Beat Your Dad at Chess and Renaud and Kahn's The Art of the Checkmate. Replaced this portion of my daily chess improvement regimen with a review of master games (see bottom of blog). I am regularly modifying the regimen to keep it fresh and interesting ... learning has got to be enjoyable to be sustained.
A very interesting gambit line; after move 4 the board visual looks perfectly fine for White, but the beauty of open games is that looks can be very deceiving.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if your opponent's play wasn't influenced by the rating disparity. I find it hard to explain White's move 7 otherwise, as that's the logical point to have a serious think and wonder what your opponent is up to, besides appearing to simply give away a knight.
This is also another excellent example of why it pays to study openings properly, even at the class level.