'The Trompowsky Attack'

I guess that most chess players had already heard about this opening which start with 1.d4...Nf6 2.Bg5!. What's the idea behind it? We know that Steinitz said that's important first develop the knights, so why develop the bishop on the second move?

The idea behind it is to take the enemy knight on f6, abdicating of the bishop pair and cause some damage on black's pawn structure. Then, by trading the bishop by the knight, white wins a static and long term advantage but lost a little bit of dark square control and dynamic advantage assured by the bishops.

The first game on Trompowsky Attack in my database is from 1912

Now, let's questions ourselves... why 'Trompowsky' Attack? Where that's name came from?

This opening received that name because of Octávio Trompowsky, a brazilian chess player who popularized 1.d4...Nf6 2.Bg5 at Chess Olympics at the decade of 30.

Octávio Trompowsky

1939 brazilian chess champion

Let's look now to a game by Octávio Trompowsky. The game that I'll show now is his best game, a great masterpiece that made the Trompowsky Attack receive his name. But that wasn't he only game on that opening.

After Alekhine had played 1939 Chess Olympiad in Argentina, he took a small vacation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil because of the start of World War II and then met Octávio Trompowsky and also played a friendly game with brazilian's 1939 Chess Olympiad team.

Alekhine commenting on the Trompowsky Opening by AlekhineNotebooks

I hope that the readers were able to enjoy this small post.