From 1400 to 1500 : Working on your openings - part 2
I decided to do a test this week and play ... the King's Gambit as white, mostly against <2000 rated players.
I am not so keen about that opening, but I wanted to test it because lots of players play 1...e5 on 1.e4.
And guess what ? Most of them seem not well prepared or go down very quickly.
Resulting in +21 -2 =0
Let's have a look at what is going wrong and why, and after that we'll look at better options.
The next day I played several King's Gambit games again.
And I was surprised to see 2.f6?! again.
So that was 3 times the bad move 2...f6?!?! of which I started to think that it was a new recommendations by a famous GM or something.
But finally I did my homework and looked up that move.
See here the only game I found :
Source (and comments) : http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1255117
So that was a bit embarassing for me because as a teenager I learned about the Damiano Defense opening being bad, and why.
However, I just want to show the bad preparation in these 3 games of mine. Make sure you avoid the 2.f7f6 move in the KG opening, unless you want to make a counter gambit game out of it.
Here's some more KG games where black can improve :
How can black better play against the King's Gambit ?
The Falkbeer counter gambit is an excellent choice !
Conclusion : Lots of beginning chess players are told to play open games to learn better chess, and are therefore encouraged to play 1.e4 e5 as black, which might be a good thing. However, it seems that as black they are prepared for Ruy Lopez (but often not the exchange variation), Italian game, Scotch, but not the King's Gambit.
... Do your homework ... now ! 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_Gambit,_Falkbeer_Countergambit
http://www.365chess.com/eco/C31_King's_Gambit_Declined_Falkbeer_counter-gambit
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessopening?eco=c31
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1004358
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/the-bluestone-counter-gambit
