Halloween gambit

By Frank “Boy” Pestaño
Chessmoso

Gambits, where one side sacrifices material for an advance in development , are the most exciting and popular openings in chess.

Halloween is just around the corner and I’ll show you an opening that will definitely scare your opponents.

It was known in the late 19th century as the Mueller-Schultze gambit, but was “baptized” later as the Halloween gambit by Rainier Schenkler in his magazine, Randspringer, in December 1993. The name was chosen because anyone, including strong players, will be very surprised if it is used against them in tournaments.

Indeed the fourth move of white is shocking and scary. After 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6, when black is expecting the normal 4.Bb5, white comes up with a surprising capture of the pawn on e5 (diagram}.

A certain Steffen Jacob read the article, and was deeply moved that he created Brause, a clone of the chess program Crafty , that played more than 3,000 Halloween gambit games in the internet from the 1996-98 and it scored 72 percent.

Brause showed in a lot of short games how deadly this gambit could be. One example: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Nxe5 Nxe5 5.d4 Nc6 (this is one main line, the other one is 5 ..Ng6), 6.d5 Nb8 7.e5 Ng8 8.d6 c6 9.Bc4 f6 10.Qh5+ g6 11.exf6 Qxf6 12.Qe2+ Kd8 13.Ne4 and Black resigned.

For more examples of games using the Halloween gambit and how exciting it could be, read the article by Paul Keiser in Chessville and be you would be surprised, indeed.

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