I experimented with the Halloween Gambit in blitz on ICC. It's surprisingly good considering White trades a knight for a pawn. Here is an awesome position I had by move 16:
Black to move.
Can you find the forced mate? This one shouldn't be hard.
What this position shows is first of all, poor play and second of all: the power of the opening. Black retreated his knights to b8 and g8. After that, he desperately tried to uncork his position. Meanwhile, White developed naturally and had his army ready for action.
Wow interesting games, Deepthought.
Sheesh i don't think i'd have the guts too sac my knight for just one pawn. Unless I saw some winning forced combo. or something. I am not crazy about sacing even a pawn, to tell the truth. Probably why i never play gambits.
The last one is actually losing for white, though; Game 1382969
Originally posted by Orange Peel Is it usually winning. 4. Ngxe5?
It's great if your opponent doesn't know how to reply to it. If xe does, you may be in trouble. And in correspondence chess, there's a good chance that xe will either look it up or think it through well enough to find a good reply even if xe hasn't played it before (I won my first and so far only game with black against the Halloween even though I had no idea what had hit me and didn't use a database). Still, I have used it successfully a few times here, and it's a lot of fun.
Halloween Gambit Fun!!!
02 Dec '06 09:38
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