Englund Gambit

	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H
8th									8th
7th									7th
6th									6th
5									5
4th									4th
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H

Basic position of the Englund Gambit (after 1. d2 – d4 e7 – e5 2. d4xe5 Nb8 – c6 3. Ng1 – f3 Qd8 – e7)

The Englund Gambit is an opening in the game of chess . It is one of the closed games and arises from the fact that Black offers the king's pawn to capture on the double step of the queen's pawn 1. d2 – d4 with 1.… e7 – e5. The actual Englund gambit in the narrower sense results after 2. d4xe5 Nb8 – c6 3. Ng1 – f3 Qd8 – e7. In a broader sense, other variants that result from 1. d2 – d4 e7 – e5 are now included in the Englund Gambit.

White should accept the gambit (a pawn sacrifice in the opening). He could also provoke Albin's counter-gambit or the Budapest gambit , as well as move into the middle gambit himself , but these openings promise White less advantage than the offered Englund gambit.

Even if the Englund Gambit is not considered to be strictly correct and can therefore only be found marginally in professional tournaments, it leads to a sharp, intricate game and is therefore quite popular in the field of amateur chess and correspondence chess .

In the opening system of the ECO codes , the Englund Gambit is classified under the key A40. It was named after the Swedish chess player Fritz Carl Anton Englund .

Main variants

The main variants of the gambit are introduced by the moves ( see also: chess notation ):

1. d2 – d4 e7 – e5

Accepted gambit

• 2. d4xe5 d7 – d6 is the Hartlaub gambit named after Carl Hartlaub . Possible options:
  • 3. Ng1-f3 Bc8-g4
    • 4. e2 – e4 (The move has now started Morphy - Karl von Braunschweig and Graf Isoard, Paris 1858. Nb8 – d7, the Albin - Blackburne gambit, is an attempt at improvement)
    • 4. Lc1-f4 Sb8-c6
  • 3. e5xd6 Bf8xd6

• 2. d4xe5 Nb8 – c6 3. Ng1 – f3 Qd8 – e7 - the Englund gambit in the narrower sense:
  • • 4. Dd1-d5 (Stockholm variant, this position was the subject of the topic tournament of 1933) makes the exemption victims 4. ... f7-f6 5. e5xf6 Sg8xf6 6. Dd5-b3 necessary.
    • 4. Bc1 – f4 (coarse variant) White must move after 4.… Qe7 – b4 + 5. Bf4 – d2 Qb4xb2 6. Nb1 – c3, because 6. Bd2 – c3? leads to loss of pieces or mate after Bf8 – b4: 7. Qd1 – d2 Bb4xc3 8. Qd2xc3 Qb2 – c1 #
    • 4. Nb1 – c3 and after Nc6xe5 5. Nc3 – d5 Ne5xf3 + 6. g2xf3 De7 – d8, 7. Qd1 – d4 is a recommendation from Viktor Kortschnoi
    • 4. Lc1-g5
  • 3.… d7 – d6 is the Hartlaub Delayed Gambit
  • 3.… f7 – f6 The Soller Gambit analyzed by Karl Soller and Emil Joseph Diemer in the 1950s . They tried to play a similar system as the Blackmar-Diemer-Gambit with the gambit as a follower . To this end, Soller played f7 – f6 on move two. The variant introduced by Kurt Richter in 1940 with 2.… Nb8 – c6 3. Ng1 – f3 f7 – f6 is considered a bit better.
    • 4. e5xf6 Ng8xf6 5. Bc1-g5
    • 4. Bc1-f4 f6xe5 5. Nf3xe5 Qd8-f6
    • 4. e2 – e4 f6xe5 is the Traxler variant.
  • 3.… Bf8 – c5 (Felbecker gambit)
  • 3.… Ng8 – e7 (silver mints) 4. Nb1 – c3 Now an immediate Ne7 – g6 would result from 5. Bc1 – g5 Bf8 – e7 6. Bg5xe7 Qd8xe7 7. Nc3 – d5 De7 – d8 8. Qd1 – d2 Nc6xe5 9. Nf3xe5 Ng6xe5 10. Qd2 – c3 refuted.

Rejected gambit

• 2. c2 – c4 d7 – d5 (transition to Albin's counter-gambit )
• 2. c2 – c4 Ng8 – f6 (transition to the Budapest Gambit )
• 2. e2 – e4 (transition to the middle Gambit )

history

1. d2 – d4 e7 – e5 was introduced into tournament practice at the end of the 19th century by Julius Thirring and Carl Hartlaub. They answered 2. d4xe5 with d7 – d6. Today this variant is known as the Hartlaub Gambit. It was hoped to lead into a variant of the Philidor defense which had been examined a few years earlier by Adolf Albin and Joseph Henry Blackburne and was also played by Emanuel Lasker and Jacques Mieses . Froms Gambit is also likely to have served as inspiration , in which, however, it is not the d-pawn but the f-pawn that beats e5 and d6.

The actual Englund Gambit was examined in 1930 by the Latvian master Carl Behting in an article in the Deutsche Schachzeitung . Behting mainly examined variant 4. Qd1 – d5. Today this variant is called the Stockholm variant . In Stockholm, namely organized Fritz Carl Anton Englund , who through an article Behtings in the German chess newspaper became aware of the gambit, 1932, a theme tournament in which this fourth train was prescribed. White won 18 of the 30 games in this tournament with 5 draws, which is why the gambit was then considered incorrect.

Nevertheless, the Swiss chess player Henry Grob regularly used the Englund Gambit in correspondence chess games . He also published a book about the opening in 1968. Instead of 4. Qd1 – d5, Grob recommended 4. Bc1 – f4. Like Behting and later Stefan Bücker , Grob came to the conclusion that the Englund Gambit was definitely a playable opening.

A third gambit arising from 1. d2 – d4 e7 – e5 is the Soller gambit, named after Karl Soller , which was introduced by Karl Soller in the early 1950s. Soller preferred the Blackmar Diemer Gambit with White and now wanted to play a similar opening with Black. Even Emil Josef Diemer and Hans Felbecker applied the Soller Gambit regularly.

literature

• Stefan Bücker : Englund Gambit 1. d4 e5. Three gambits in one: Hartlaub gambit, Soller gambit, Englund gambit , Edition Mädler in Walter Rau Verlag, Düsseldorf 1988. ISBN 3-7919-0301-2 .
• Henry Grob : Englund Gambit , Zurich 1968.

Web links

• Stefan Bücker: Visiting Planet Englund ( Memento from July 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) - Article on chesscafe.com (March 2006; PDF file; 298 kB)