Underpromotion in the opening

Occasionally in blitz and bullet I get the opportunity to execute one of the most famous opening traps of all -  the classic Lasker trap in the Albin Countergambit. Potentially the only opening trap which has an entire wikipedia page devoted to it.

Despite the fact that seemingly everyone knows about this trap, and there's a 1M+ view video on it from GothamChess, master strength players are still falling for this in blitz and bullet.

One might wonder if this sort of underpromotion is unique to the Albin countergambit, or whether similar ideas can be used in other openings. After quite a bit of searching, it turns out that promoting to a knight in the opening is more common I initially thought.

Last year I decided to scour the internet to collect as many examples of early underpromotion motifs (move 10 or earlier) as I could. I am only looking for underpromotions which I could realistically imagine seeing in a game between players who are trying to win. Examples where underpomotion was winning, but not the best move were discarded, along with one-off underpromotions in the early middlegame which would never happen again.

 
Firstly, aside from the Albin I often get a similar idea with reversed colours when my Blackmar-Diemer gambit is declined:

Jobava London or Veresov Attack players can also easily get the same position by transposition after e.g. 1.d4 d5 2.Nc3 c5 3.e4 dxe4 4.d5 etc.

 
Important to note that while the regular Albin is somewhat dubious, this version is not. In this accelerated version with an extra tempo up on the Albin, the gambit isn't unsound anymore and is a very promising try for white even if black defends properly.

Likewise, London system players can also get a similar idea against the challenging 2...c5. Once again, this gambit is sound. White gets good play and the position is approximately equal even if black knows his stuff.

 
Speaking of the Blackmar-Diemer, here's an underpromotion played by Diemer himself. As usual, promoting to the knight was the only winning move.

The same theme can also appear in the c3-Sicilian, provided black makes some terrible moves.

All the ideas so far involve the familiar exf7+ followed by the underpromotion fxg8=N+. It is true that this seems to be the most common way for underpromotion to occur, but it is not the only way. Here are a couple more unique cases.

Possibly the most famous historical example I came across was played between Reinle - Lange 1936 (not Max Lange in case you were wondering).

An almost identical game was seen more than 50 years later in Moore - NN 1989.

This pattern - knight underpromotion in the corner of the board for checkmate, ended up being the second most common underpromotion theme in practice, although it seems to always require one side to play very badly.

Very similar, and equally stupid was the miniature Wiede - Goetz:

Slightly more relevant is the game Fidlow - Mayer. White tries to set a trap against the Von Hennig-Schara gambit by "hanging" a piece with 5.fxe6 . Although it must be said that this is basically hope chess since white is just worse after 5...Bxe6.

Getting to something more serious, there is a known trap in the ponziani featuring an underpromotion royal fork. Here's a game played by Ponziani author David Taylor, although the same game has undoubtedly been played many times before and since. The highest rated victim I could find was a 2800+ on lichess. Aside from the underpromotion in the Albin, this is probably the most realistic example, and the only other opening underpromotion that is regularly shown in chess books.

Knight underpromotions into a fork like this were surprisingly rare. I was only able to find a couple examples. For example this pretty tactic in the bishops opening.