Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Krejcik Gambit
This post is a collaboration with my friend Misha who is a true chess enthusiast.
I met him at Nairobi Chess Club (NCC) where he served as a Committee Member, Director of Play for five years and trained the young members.
Chess gambits are openings where one player sacrifices material (pawns and/or pieces) in order to achieve some advantage, usually a quick development of own pieces while slowing the opponent’s.
Gambits have played a role in the so-called Romantic period of chess history. They are usually aggressive openings and always lead to lively attack and counterattack games. Playing a gambit is an effective way of bringing your opponents out of their comfort zone.
Nowadays, in the top level practice, the only gambit frequently played is the Queen’s Gambit. Like any gambit, it can be accepted or declined. Nevertheless, this particular gambit leads in most cases to a positional play.
However, at club level is always possible to find gambits in the spirit of the Romantic period.
Today’s game is an example. It features the so-called Krejcik gambit where White offers his g-pawn in move 2. In the subsequent course of the game, White plays a wild series of moves, confuses his opponent, caught him into a trap and wins the game in 13 moves!
Gambits frequently lead to quick wins and involve wild positions. That was the way players usually faced in the Romantic period of chess.
Dear readers, although these traps are not often appearing in real games, it’s worth knowing them in order to avoid yourself to be the victim. Besides that, these imaginative combinations are always an enrichment of our knowledge of the game. And of course, without mistakes, this kind of beauty would never happen.
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