Playing "The Vampire Gambit"
The vampire gambit
In recent months, due to the force of the pandemic, as well as the recent hit of Netflix's The Queen's gambit, many people have started playing chess and the number of chess content on the internet has skyrocketed too.
Among all this new material, those who love the game, be them masters or novices, are able to find useful information such as endgame theory, pawn structures, middlegame ideas, recommended books, and of course: Openings.
In particular, when we try to study this last subject, opening theory, we support ourselves on popular books, classes and engines in order to comprehend the nature of the position; that way, we can latter on create our own strategies and be confident about our development; however, this generally happens only with the main lines, those who we are going to face more often in training sesions or tournaments, for example: the Ruy López, the sicilian, the queen's gambit, the London system and the french defense, among others. Now, what happens when the position is set to be, at least at first sight, a common study opening, but then things go different from expected?
This question is going to be present while playing against different creative systems played by the chess community, who has developed a curious love for playing old, weird and unorthodox openings, such as this beauty known as the vampire gambit, introduced first to the players under that name on november 2nd, 2020 by the IM Levy Rozman on his channel GothamChess.
At the end of this post you will find a link to his video where he explains the basics of this gambit and shows some games where he develops it.
The main characteristics.
- The first move invites black to go for a classical English opening.
- The desired ideal position goes: 1. c4 - e5 2. f4. Like this, it is said that you are attacking your oponent side of the board with your two fangs, the vampire fangs.
- Can be applied for almost any black response but the following:
- if 1. c4 - b5: You can't safely play 2. f4 without giving quality to your opponent. In this case, it is recommended to play 2. cxb5, accepting the pawn offered by the black pieces. This variant is known as the Jaenisch gambit.
- if 1. c4 - d5: In this case, if played 2. f4, we are giving away our chance to take control of the center through 2. cxd4 which then can lead to some tactic positions with a slight white advantage.
- if 1. c4 - Nf6: Here, you can do one of two things, develop 2.Nc3 with the posibility of abording main lines.
As for now, I invite you to check this two games of a proposed vampire gambit structure. The first one, played online in a blitz game by this humble writer, follows a stright development on the structure, whilst the second one, played by two of the most renowned players of the 1950´s, allures the two knights variant, but suddenly, on the third move, takes on a variant of the vampire structure.
Please, note that the level of the players of the first game is around 1650, so you may find some innacuracies.
Enjoy the games!
Game #1.
Game #2.
Video by IM Levy Rozman a.k.a GothamChess: