Beat The Evan's Gambit
Hello everyone! Today I am going to show a simple method to play against the Evan's Gambit. Note that the main purpose of this blog is not to refute the opening as it is practically a very sound opening, but to have a practically good position. So let's get started.
Introduction:
The Evan's gambit is a variation of Giuoco Piano, characterized by the move 4. b4.
The main purpose of this pawn sacrifice is that white will gain a lot of tempos and launch a devastating attack on black. However, I will show you a series of moves that will ruin white's attacking chances and give you a very comfortable position.
Now let's examine the pros and cons of the position reached.
Pros:
1. Evan's gambit players are attacking players. But you can see white does not get an attacking position at all. They are not good at handling this type of position nor wanna play this type of position.
2. Black gets the bishop pair.
3. Black also gets lots of attacking possibilities..
4. You do not need to remember any theory or move except the initial Be7, Na5 idea
Cons:
1. You give back the extra pawn
Detailed Variation: (Optional)
You do not really need to remember all the variations after Be7, Na5. Still, for the sake of completeness, I will give a couple of variations here.
Firstly, what if white tries to keep the bishop pair:
Another interesting variation is when white sacrifices the bishop. It is unsound but it was tried against me a couple of times.
Example games:
As always, you should analyze model games to understand the opening better. Here I am adding two model games. You can look out for more using the databases.
Example #1:
Here you will see how the position for white can get bad very fast by playing normal developing moves in this system.
Example #2:
This game demonstrates why I told black has excellent attacking chances and white has terrible pawn structures
Drills:
Now test your opening knowledge by playing out these puzzles:
