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King's Gambit
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== History == The King's Gambit was one of the most popular openings for over 300 years, and has been played by many of the strongest players in many of the greatest {{chessgloss|brilliancies}}, including the [[Immortal Game]]. Nevertheless, players have held widely divergent views on it. [[François-André Danican Philidor]] (1726–1795), the greatest player and [[Chess theory|theorist]] of his day, wrote that the King's Gambit should end in a [[draw (chess)|draw]] with [[optimal play|best play]] by both sides, stating that "a gambit equally well attacked and defended is never a decisive [game], either on one side or the other."<ref>{{Citation |last=Philidor|first=François-André Danican|author-link=François-André Danican Philidor |title=Analysis of the Game of Chess (1777) |year=2005 |edition=2nd |publisher=Harding Simple Ltd. |isbn=1-84382-161-3 |pages=67}}</ref> Writing over 150 years later, [[Siegbert Tarrasch]], one of the world's strongest players in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, pronounced the opening "a decisive mistake" and wrote that "it is almost madness to play the King's Gambit."<ref>{{Citation |last=Tarrasch|first=Siegbert|author-link=Siegbert Tarrasch |title=The Game of Chess |year=1938 |publisher=David McKay |pages=309}}</ref> Similarly, future [[World Chess Championship|world champion]] [[Bobby Fischer]] wrote a famous article, "A Bust to the King's Gambit", in which he stated, "In my opinion the King's Gambit is busted. It loses by force" and offered his [[Fischer Defense]] (3...d6) as a refutation.<ref name="FischerBusttext">Bobby Fischer, "A Bust to the King's Gambit", ''[[American Chess Quarterly]]'', Summer 1961, pp. 3–9.</ref><ref name="FischerBustPDF">{{cite web | url=http://brooklyn64.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/a-bust-to-the-kings-gambit.pdf | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201111193505/http://brooklyn64.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/a-bust-to-the-kings-gambit.pdf | archive-date=2020-11-11 | url-status=dead | author=Fischer, Bobby | title=A Bust to the King's Gambit | year=1961 | access-date=2020-05-21 | publisher=brooklyn64.com }}</ref> FM [[Graham Burgess]], in his book ''The Mammoth Book of Chess'', noted the discrepancy between the King's Gambit and [[Wilhelm Steinitz]]'s accumulation theory. Steinitz had argued that an attack is only justified when a player has an advantage, and an advantage is only obtainable after the opponent makes a mistake. Since 1...e5 does not look like a blunder, White should therefore not be launching an attack.<ref name="Burgess">{{Citation |last=Burgess|first=Graham|author-link=Graham Burgess |title=The Mammoth Book of Chess |year=2010 |publisher=Running Press }}</ref> While the King's Gambit Accepted was a staple of Romantic era chess, the opening began to decline with the development of opening theory and improvements in defensive technique in the late 19th century. By the 1920s, 1.e4 openings declined in popularity with the rise of the [[hypermodernism (chess)|hypermodern]] school, with many players switching to 1.d4 and 1.c4 openings and {{chessgloss|positional play}}. After World War II, 1.e4 openings became more popular again, with [[David Bronstein]] being the first [[Grandmaster (chess)|grandmaster]] in decades to use the King's Gambit in serious play. He inspired [[Boris Spassky]] to also take up the King's Gambit, although Spassky was not willing to risk using the opening in any of his World Championship matches. Spassky did beat many strong players with it, however, including Bobby Fischer,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1080046 |title=Spassky vs. Fischer, Mar del Plata 1969 |website=[[Chessgames.com]] }}</ref> [[Zsuzsa Polgar]],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1078466 |title=Spassky vs. Polgar, Plaza 1988 |website=[[Chessgames.com]] }}</ref> and a famous {{chessgloss|brilliancy}} against Bronstein himself.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1034110 |title=Spassky vs. Bronstein, USSR Championship 1960 |website=[[Chessgames.com]] }}</ref> In 2012, an [[April Fools' Day]] prank by [[Chessbase]] in association with [[Vasik Rajlich]]—author of chess engine [[Rybka]]—claimed to have proven to a 99.99999999% certainty that the King's Gambit is at best a draw for White, but only after 3.Be2.<ref name="Rajlich">{{cite web|url=http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8047|title=Rajlich: Busting the King's Gambit, this time for sure|date=2 April 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://en.chessbase.com/post/the-chebase-april-fools-revisited|title=The ChessBase April Fools revisited|date=10 April 2012}}</ref> Revealing the prank, Rajlich admitted that current computer technology is nowhere near solving such a task.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://en.chessbase.com/post/the-chebase-april-fool-s-prank|title=The ChessBase April Fool's prank|date=4 April 2012}}</ref> The King's Gambit is rare in modern high-level play.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://en.chessbase.com/post/medias-r4-carlsen-plays-the-king-s-gambit-in-the-king-s-tournament- |publisher=Chessbase |title=Medias R4: Carlsen plays the King's Gambit in the King's Tournament! |access-date=31 May 2016 |archive-date=3 September 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180903115057/https://en.chessbase.com/post/medias-r4-carlsen-plays-the-king-s-gambit-in-the-king-s-tournament- |url-status=dead }}</ref> The main reason is that it is hard to gain an opening advantage with White against strong opponents, with GM [[Matthew Sadler]] once joking that the dream of every King's Gambit player is a "worse but holdable ending".<ref>https://tcec-chess.com/articles/Sufi_23_-_Sadler.pdf, page 17</ref> A handful of grandmasters have continued to use it, including [[Joseph Gallagher]], [[Hikaru Nakamura]], [[Baskaran Adhiban]], [[Nigel Short]], and [[Alexei Fedorov]], albeit never as a main weapon.
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