Nova Daily - 21 April 2025
Hi!
From the start of my blogging I decided to take it slow. I've never wanted to delude myself that I could somehow skip the hard work and "become rich" quickly, because 1) nothing that's worthwhile comes easy and 2) there are no shortcuts to mastery. Life doesn't work that way, and impatience makes you very prone to fall victim to an elaborate scam. Impatience knows many victims.
In several of my earlier blogs I've mentioned "Slow money," a term I happily borrowed from The 50th Law by 50 Cent and Robert Greene. In this chapter, several stories are told about people who wanted to skip the drudge and get the rewards with minimal effort. Invariably they ended up being much worse off.
The perfect myth for this illusion of quick success is El Dorado, the mythical city of gold. I'd love to write something about El Dorado, but the rest of this blog will make clear why I'm not going to do that just here. But who knows: it might be another topic for an entire independent blog. I'll keep the idea in mind. For now I'll just include an epic piece of music with this title.
The game
The reason why I was reminded of El Dorado today isn't completely random. I played a game with black against someone who used the Alien Gambit against me. It's an unsound opening that has gained a lot of popularity thanks to CM Volen Duylgerov (Witty_Alien). Apparently, a lot of people play this opening line nowadays. With the best will of the world I can't think of them as anything but faithful believers in the El Dorado of chess.
All credit to Dyulgerov: it's a great meme opening, I love for him to have his own invention recognised, but ultimately it's an unsound opening variation. I've been hoping for the Alien Gambit to cross my path for quite some time, because I've been waiting to tear it to shreds in one of my blog in pretty much the same fashion as I did the Caro-Kane variation.
Today's game was exactly 7 moves short. It's perhaps the greatest disservice that anyone ever did the Alien Gambit. For me it's a very welcome short game, because I've been exhausted from the Easter weekend. Yesterday's blog was short for precisely this reason.
My thoughts:
The game was decided very early on by a howler, but that doesn't mean that I don't have anything to work on from here. Quite the contrary: even though I can better work on sleeping well, this is a great opportunity to work out this variation once and for all and be ready to cash in the points of any person mad enough to engage in the gold rush of these lines.
Model games:
It's a bit rich (pun not intended) to think that there should be any model games with this because the line is ultimately bad and deserves to be punished.
5...c5 is one of the moves to play, but it would appear that 5...h6 is perfectly playable as well. Knowing that white is very likely to capture on f7, it might even be best to learn how to deal with this variation and have the white players deliver the points on a silver platter. I'll include a Model game with the 8.Ne5+ line and analyse the rest on my own.
The analysis:
What can I take away from this game?
- The Alien Gambit might be a great surprise weapon in bullet and blitz, but it's not supposed to lead to gold. It's some sort of El Dorado that only yields something real if black cooperates or is unprepared. There's some psychological warfare that might be worth the effort when you're playing black against this in longer time controls and/or OTB games.
- The best way to refute a gambit is to accept it, and that's certainly the case here. Since white is very likely to take on f7 anyway, it's best to invite it with 5...h6 or 6...h6 (5...c5 6.N1f3 h6 might be more accurate, as here white will almost invariably take on f7), and after this, the full point is a matter of doing your homework well.
- Going 6...Nc6 isn't the right idea and should've been answered by either 7.Bc4 e6 8.Ne5 or the immediate 7.Ne5. Black has no advantage in this line whatsoever, but 7.Bb5 certainly didn't hit gold for white.
