Blackburne Shilling Gambit | TRICKIEST LINE for beginners because of how they think 🤩
#OTB #barchess #blackburnshillinggambit
One of the trickiest and most effective lines against beginner players is the Blackburne Shilling Gambit. Tonight, I played a few games with Mrs Chess Noob at Huelo Bar in Newtown. Mrs Chess Noob is very much a beginner player, and her narration of her thinking process while playing against the gambit demonstrates exactly why it's so effective!
The Blackburne Shilling Gambit leaverages a couple of factors with how beginners approach chess:
- Prior to developing a wider tactical sense, beginner players will often have a strong material focus - that is, their decisions will be heavily weighted towards winning material, and avoiding the loss of material.
- Prior to recognising patterns on the board, beginner players will often have limited depth in their calculations - sometimes, not much beyond the next move.
Historical note:
Joseph Henry Blackburne (1841-1890) was a British chess master, an icon of the Romantic era, and one of the strongest chess players of his generation. In the 1873 Vienna tournament, Blackburne not only achieved equal first place with Wilhelm Steinitz (who would later become the inaugural world chess champion), he was also given the legendary nickname der Schwarze Tod, or in English, "The Black Death" for his aggressive playing style and magnificent beard! 😲
The origin story for the Blackburne Shilling Gambit might be apocryphal, but it is alleged that Blackburne used it to hustle and win against amateur chess challengers, winning the shilling wagered on the game! Given Blackburne's strength, it is likely that he would have beaten almost any random challenger using conventional openings, and it says something about Blackburne's darstardly character that he would use such a tricky line to win as quickly as possible!
