I am a great fan of the evans and kings gambits but have never really had a chance to effect any ideas from the openings.
In this game however, ideas from the Evans gambit are “borrowed” and ruthlessly executed against a much higher rated opponent.
This game embodies some heavy gambit ideas:
open lanes for the rooks
open diagonals for the bishops
limit the freedom of the opponents king
attack with all the tools at ones disposal
“force” the opponent to lose tempo by capturing your material
sacrifice material to achieve the above five principles.
Looking at some critical moments of the game!!
on move 3:
The move order 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 .... sets up the Italian game and blacks response 3. ....h6 can be deemed a “tiny” blunder by black due to the possible loss of tempo in case white never needs the square g5 and instead seeks to blast the center wide open.
My question now was how can I make this count?After some hard thinking, I came to the conclusion that any long term plans will revolve around the freedom my dark squared bishop attains.
I will need to develop my dark squared bishop soon but to where??
I had two main ideas:
moving the b pawn and developing my bishop to a3. This would have to be real soon since I wanted this bishop to control f7 thus stop the king from castling . Giving the game an Evans gambit flavor.
castle king side followed by f4 eXf4 and finally developing the bishop to f4 giving the game a kings gambit flavor.
My choice of action would be decided by my opponents next moves. So I castled king side thus developing more pieces and waiting.
Soon enough black sought normal developing moves and finally Bc5 was played.
Position on move 5
White sacrifices the b pawn in true gambit style with the move b4 and chases the black bishop and knight away with tempo.
On move 23:
From here on end, white chases and harasses the black king relentlessly until with white to move after 23 .....Kf5
Like clockwork, from here on, the rest is history.
