Hey all, just got interested in the Tennison Gambit and im wondering if anyone could give me some help with a few continuations. For those who dont know the Tennison Gambit is 1.nf3 d5 2.e4

3...Qd5 looks like a questionable move (bringing out the queen too early), and 5...Qxg2 looks suicidal.

This is a sort of Budapest Gambit Reversed (it's normally 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.dxe5 Ng4). It should be an advantage for black that he hasn't played c7-c5 yet, since that's not a particularly useful move in the Budapest, on the contrary.

So what about, say, 3...Nf6 4.Bc4 e6 ? I guess that if 3... Bf5, then 4.g4!? is interesting. Also Game Explorer suggests simply 3...e5 taking a stake in the center, must be fine too.

Well, white's average rating was probably a lot lower as well, does Chess Assistant give the ratings?

i play this sometimes in blitz to catch people with

1.Nf3 d5 2.e4 dxe4 3.Ng5 Nf6 4.d3 ed 5.Bxd3 + Nxf7+ Bg6+ +Qxd8

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 Must've been when Keres was young and played a ton of correspondence. He experimented a bunch then.

I only see one example from Keres in megabase as well.

I've only played this interesting gambit only once, but I played it wrong after dxe4 I played Nh4 is that even sound ?

I have been looking into playing this in serious over the board competition.  It is very easy in this line for black to error and get self checkmated.  You have to like sacrifices though!  This is just a superficial preview of my research.

I have a book on this opening which still seems to be available: Amazon.com

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For some reason correspondence games have never found their way into general databases.  With all the different sponsoring organizations out there, many just one man or woman operations, it's hard to accurately track all the games.

So the correspondence DBs are sold separately, but it does seem fair to compensate those who had to actually track down all those games and enter them.

My "Big DB 2007" in ChessBase 9 has over a 100 games with the Tennison Gambit and the percentages look OK for White, although I only glanced at the first few opening moves. There's probably a "spoiler" buried somewhere in the analysis tree consisting of a few,several or more lines with very good percentages - for Black

Anyone who wants to play these obscure openings needs something like a current ChessBase "Big" or "Mega" DB with 3 or 4 million games to come up with a decent sampling and/or they need to invest in a book specifically about the obscure opening of their choice. Or they can learn the hard way...

I agree with Reb that 3...e5 seems like a very simple solution to this gambit for black and hes already better (or black is at least the only player with a chance for an advantage) after that move when having more space and better development. If white plays 4. d3 black could just ignore the pawn and continue hes development as the move does not really create any threat.

3 .. e5 is a simple solution ?  This is a simple statement, only based on general rules.  You never played this position, so how can you judge ?

I confess I often played 4.d3  hoping for exd with nice gambitplay. But 4.h4 is generally regarded as White's best reply and analyses show no disadvantages to Black.

So I really have to play a chess position before I can actually judge it?

Suddenly analyzing and exploring openings became rather pointless as you won't be able to judge any of the positions arising anyway without playing them first.