Opening traps

Dear friends and readers,

As a sequel or complement to my series on early checkmate, I also wanted to start a thread on opening traps. There are (almost) uncountable of these, but of course we want to highlight the best ones.

I hope I can get some feedback from you, be it suggestions or "votes" for traps I will propose.

Obviously, a trap is the better the more likely your opponent will be making the required moves, often inaccuracies or mistakes an experienced player will not make, unless they are the most natural developing moves and opponent isn't even aware that they might walk into a trap.

There is also the Golden Rule that you should only go for a trap if the moves still give you a good position in case the opponent plays correctly.

This might be the most important criterion to choose a trap in advance (as opposed to recognize an opportunity when the opponent has blundered without us initially intending to set that trap).

Now let's go for the good stuff:

• Trap in the Caro-kann, of opponent pins knight
• in the Scandinavian
• the well known Englund gambit trap, losing a rook, queen or the game,
• in the Dutch (but who plays that...), when they trap the bishop and get mated with Qh5 and/or Be3
• ...(to be continued)...

What is your favorite ?