#history #vienna #ohman #omaha 

I love the Vienna Gambit❣️

And so too do many of you! It’s been promoted by many chess content creators on social media and YouTube, me included. My blog from February 2023 titled, “How To Play The Vienna Gambit – A Complete Guide For Beginners” is by far my most successful article on Chess.com with over 100,000 views!

In my recorded games across Chess.com, I’ve played the Vienna Gambit (3. f4) almost 300 times, which is just over one-fifth of all my games with the white pieces. And in the Lichess Community Database, the two named Vienna Gambits, the Falkbeer and Max Lange variations, have been played almost 13 ½ million times. However, as an indication of just how broad the game of chess is, this means that the Vienna Gambit only appears in 1 in 500 games! The Vienna Gambit is often still a surprise, especially at the beginner and intermediate levels.

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The Omaha Gambit – the forgotten and best Vienna Gambit!

Today, I’m going to take you on a journey. The Vienna Game came late in the Romantic era of chess, during the second half of the 1800s. It arose in the coffee houses of Vienna, during the turbulent times as the Austrian Empire became Austria-Hungary. Chess masters including Carl Hamppe (1814-1876), Ernst Falkbeer (1819-1885), Max Lange (1832-1899), Curt von Bardeleben (1861-1924) developed, played, and promoted the Vienna system. Their names have been immortalised into the openings. However, our journey today will not be to Central Europe in the 19^th century, but rather to the American Midwest in the early 20^th.

An introduction

The top two most frequent responses by Black to the Vienna Game (1. e4 e5 2. Nc3) is to develop one of their knights. These are named variations: the queen’s knight is the Max Lange Defense (2… Nc6) and the king’s knight is the Falkbeer Variation (2… Nf6). These two responses by Black account for about two-thirds of all Vienna Games, and as already noted above, our aggressive f-pawn push is called the “Vienna Gambit” in both lines. However, what about (2… d6), which is the third most common response by Black?

Notably, this Philidor-ish Defense isn’t given a name, but (3. f4) is a named gambit, the very lovely Omaha Gambit. Interestingly, the Omaha Gambit is arguably the best Vienna Gambit! It’s been on my radar ever since my research a year ago on all 99 named f4/f5 chess openings.

As can be seen, playing the Falkbeer and Max Lange Vienna Gambits gives an objective evaluation advantage to Black according to high depth engine analysis. In contrast, the Omaha Gambit is evaluated as equal at [0.00]. Furthermore, take notice of the White vs Black to win percentages and the win odds ratios between the three. The two “Vienna Gambits” are generally good but are less effective against higher rated opponents. On the other hand, the Omaha Gambit’s performance is sustained even against higher rated opponents, insofar as those rated 1800-2500 in the Lichess community database. What about in the Chess.com database of master games?

• Vienna Gambit (Falkbeer): White 40% vs Black 36% [win odds-ratio (OR): 1.11]
• Vienna Gambit (Max Lange): White 46% vs Black 39% [win OR: 1.18]
• Omaha Gambit: White 54% vs Black 32% [win OR: 1.69] 😲

Hunting for the lost history

With my interest piqued, I wanted to know more about the history of the Omaha Gambit… Another city-named gambit! But what does Omaha, the largest city in the US state of Nebraska on the Missouri River, have to do with Vienna? How did it get its name? 🤔

A quick internet search did not find anything fruitful. The pages on the Omaha Gambit from Chess.com, Lichess/Wikibooks, and Book Moves are silent on the matter. Wikipedia doesn’t even have an entry. The only long response from Chess.StackExchange on the question, “How did the Omaha Gambit get its name?” was the disappointing:

… there doesn’t appear to be a definitive historical reason why this specific gambit is called the ‘Omaha Gambit’. Many openings are named after places, often to recognize where they were first played or popularized, but in this case, there's no clear link between Omaha and this gambit.

Hmm… The only statement on the history of the Omaha seemed entirely conjectural. Whoever the respondent was couldn’t find a reason, so concluded that there wasn’t one. This might be an unwise assumption given most Romantic style openings were developed in the late-19^th and early 20^th centuries, long before any form of electronic collation of data.

My next step was to consult three separate resources. Firstly, my two books for chess history research, The Oxford Companion to Chess, by David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld, and Unorthodox Chess Openings, by Eric Schiller. Unfortunately, neither publication had an entry on the Omaha Gambit.

The third resource is NM Bill Wall’s amazing chess page. NM Wall graciously wrote the foreword to my book and helped give me some pointers to some historical information during the research stage. Unfortunately, it’s no longer online, but the last version of his website (February 2025) can be accessed through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Alas, there too was nothing on the Omaha Gambit. 😔

Where to next?

The last step was to manually explore a large database with many historical games. The best free source is the amazing LumbrasGigabase by @Lumbra74 (Michael Jansen), currently with 15 million games, which I first discovered a year ago. And it was here, that I struck gold! 🤩

Using the most up-to-date database at the time of writing (March 2025), the Omaha Gambit position shows up in 769 games. When sorted by date, the earliest game was Taubenhaus—MacLeod, 1889, played during the 6^th American Chess Congress in New York. Jan Taubenhaus (1850-1919) was a Polish-born, French chess master, who taught and played at the famous Café de la Régence in Paris. As a champion from Warsaw, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia, he would have been familiar with the Vienna Game. His opponent, Nicholas MacLeod (1870-1965) the Canadian Chess Champion, perhaps less so. Nonetheless, MacLeod held his own before a mistake in the endgame.

Historical trivia: the 6^th American Chess Congress of 1889 was supposed to be for the World Chess Championship, but it has not been recognised as such. The reason? Wilhelm Steinitz, the first and reigning world chess champion, helped organise the event and didn’t play, attending it as a spectator and journalist! A book with all 432 games annotated by Steinitz himself is available.

The stupendous game!

I was very excited to see the second game in the database! A game played by “Ohman” in 1942 in Omaha, which came with a win by checkmate in 15-moves!

And when I had a look at the game, I was astounded! 🤯

Ohman—Buckle, 1942, Omaha, Nebraska, USA

Consider Ohman’s audacious bishop sacrifice (9. Bxf7+!?) – a devious manoeuvre that I’m sure he knew was technically a blunder! However, it constructs a beautiful opportunity as after (9… Kxf7), Ohman struck with (10. Ne5+!?) double-check! In the position, Black must find the only correct move (10… Ke8), but that just looks wrong as (11. Qh5+) seems borderline fatal with White having three attackers on the weak f7 square! Nonetheless this is technically correct as with perfect play, Black holds the defence and at the end, White does not have compensation for their lost material. Perfect play though… The engine rates the position at roughly [-1.5] favouring Black, but the Lichess community database finds that White wins 79% vs Black 21% even if they find the correct move!

Ohman’s opponent instead played (10… Ke6??), a blunder and Ohman had a delicious checkmate-in-five of practically forced captures!

• 11. Qg4+! and Ohman sacrificed their knight (11… Kxe5)
• 12. d4+ and Ohman forced Black to capture the pawn (12… Kxd4)
• 13. Be3+ and Ohman sacrificed their bishop (13… Kxe3)
• 14. Rad1 and Ohman hangs their queen on g4 (14… Bxg4)…
• … to deliver a glorious checkmate (15. Rd3#)! 😚🤌

So, just who was “Ohman”, who played this Romantic masterpiece in Omaha? Now that I had a name rather than just a city name, it was much easier to expand the search and triangulate the findings.

Reverend Howard Ohman: a chess master almost lost to time

Back to my previous resources, NM Bill Wall’s chess page gave me specific identifiers on Ohman, his given name and year of birth and death! On a webpage that was a compendium of various chess records, Wall included:

Most state titles – Howard Ohman (1899-1963) won the Nebraska State Chess Champions 25 times.

And with this, all was revealed!

Actually, on reviewing the list of state champions from the Nebraska State Chess Association, Howard Ohman was the Nebraska State Chess Champion an extraordinary 26 times, not 25! He was champion from 1917 to 1940 inclusive, which is 24 consecutive years, and then also in 1942 and 1946. 😲

A wonderful article about Ohman was written by John Hartmann, then a freelancer journalist, and published in the May 2020 issue of Chess Life. Hartmann is now the current editor of the publication. Amazingly, the full magazine is publicly available for reading online for free – check it out! In the article, we find the source of the counting error (25 vs 26) as Hartmann forgot that the count begins from one not zero!

Extending on the information in the article, I discovered that Ohman’s parents, Albert Öhman and Emma Ohman were Swedish migrants. Nine-months prior to Ohman’s birth (July 1899), the World’s Fair was being hosted in Omaha, the Trans-Mississippi Exposition, which ran for five months from June 1 to November 1, 1898, and attracted over 2.6 million visitors to Omaha. Perhaps, they were attracted to and settled in Omaha due to the World’s Fair?

Howard Ohman grew up in Omaha, graduating from high school, and then university with a law degree. However, for much of his adult life, he worked for the YMCA and the First Central Congregational Church.

Hartmann describes many of Ohman’s chess achievements in his Chess Life article and it is clear the Ohman was among the top American players, likely within the top 10, during his time. Unfortunately, Ohman tended to discard his scoresheets, so precious few of his games have been recorded. In his article, Hartmann serendipitously encounters a collection of Ohman’s games, carefully conserved scoresheets that had been collected and bound by famous chess archivist, Jack Spence. And the first game that Hartmann includes, a game that he described as “Ohman’s most famous game” from 1931, is a delight that is very familiar!

Ohman—Buck, 1931, Omaha Nebraska

As we can see from this game played by Ohman a decade earlier, he was still playing the Vienna Game, but here, rather than playing (3. f4) the Omaha Gambit, he played the relatively less forcing (3. Bc4). The game transposes to an Omaha Gambit position after (3… Be7 4. f4). The game then proceeds with the same tactical pattern: the bishop sacrifice, double-check, and then multiple piece sacrifices with checkmate on move 15.

Omaha Gambit – its naming rediscovered!

And with this, we’ve pieced together a credible and very likely source of the name of the Omaha Gambit. Howard Ohman, a lifelong resident of Omaha, Nebraska and stalwart of the Omaha Chess Club (which was housed in the YMCA where he worked!), one of the strongest American players of his generation who dominated his local competition for a quarter century, both knew of and played this trap line out of the Vienna Game from as early as 1931. Of Ohman and his 1931 game, Hartmann wrote:

A modest man, he was reluctant to show “that old thing,” as he called it, but his brilliant tactical play still shines nearly 80 years later.

That game from 1942, likely played by Ohman in the Nebraska State Championship, indicated that Ohman now had a preference to push his f-pawn against the Philidor-ish Defense to the Vienna Game immediately.

The opening gambit with an unforgettable trap; it seems to have been locally famous according to the people interviewed and described in Hartmann’s article who knew Ohman. It seems plausible that observers would want to give the opening a name. Ohman would likely have demurred to something as gaudy as the “Ohman Gambit”. If you were in the Omaha Chess Club at that time, what would you have seen as the next most natural and obvious name?

The Omaha Gambit. 😊

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Chess Noob plays the Omaha Gambit!

I’ve only recently started playing the Omaha Gambit against the Philidor-ish Defense (1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 d6). Historically, I’ve always played (3. d4), which is consistent with the opening principle of taking the full centre with pawns if you’re permitted and is the most accurate move according to the engine. However, I’ve never quite liked it because the obvious continuation, (3… exd4 4. Qxd4 Nc6) results in my queen being forced to move a second time. Although I know that (5. Qd3) is the optimal move (and thus, it cannot be anything other than at least “fine”), I’ve never really liked having the queen there or playing the resulting position.

In this game, I played the Omaha and Black accepted the gambit (3. f4 exf4) and on turn 4, we have this fantastic choice. Why fantastic? Because the Lichess community database suggests that every option is winning regardless of Stockfish’s opinion! 🥳

The most accurate move, which is also a nice Romantic move is (4. Qf3)! Early queen being the best move? Nice!

The other logical looking moves are technically all inaccurate, but the Lichess community database says that White has a strong win likelihood advantage despite this. These are:

• 4. Nf3 – king’s knight to the logical developing square and guarding h4 from Qh4+
• 4. Bc4 – king’s bishop developing to it’s normal square with vision on Black’s f7 square
• 4. d4 – control the centre with pawns, and open the diagonal for the dark square bishop and pressure Black’s off-side f4-pawn

Even with (4. Qf3), these other moves are likely to be good in the coming turns.

In the game, Black immediately attempted to defend their won f4-pawn with (4… g5). This is very reminiscent of the King’s Gambit, or a line in the Max Lange Vienna Gambit. The very thematic move to know is to challenge Black’s g-pawn with (5. h4)! In the position, Black’s intuitions often result in inaccurate moves. They added another defender (6… hxg5), but this was a mistake.  Black’s best option was to give back the material and simply develop.

Black’s fixation on holding onto the f4-pawn became their undoing as they further lose tempo. Their (7… Qf6?) was met with another thematic Vienna Game move, the queen’s knight to d5 (8. Nd5), hitting the queen on f6, with a fork on the undefended c6-pawn, which chains a threat of an absolute fork of Black’s king and a8-rook. Classic!

Black was forced to un-develop their queen, and they now were catastrophically behind in development.

Even without playing the most optimal moves, I was very comfortable with White as I was essentially several moves ahead. In their attempt to hold onto material, Black critically weakened their kingside pawn structure, especially the light squares around their king. Having little fight left, Black played the following moves a little carelessly, but it probably wouldn’t have made much difference. I gave checkmate on turn 15, exploiting the weak light squares. Good game, GG!

Game: https://www.chess.com/analysis/library/47XV1tsc1c

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I'm currently in the planning stages of writing another book, a detailed beginner's guide on how to play the Vienna Game in the Romantic style! Is this something you're interested in? Let me know!

Learn how to play the best chess opening attacks in the Romantic style with my new book, “Become a Chess Assassin!”, and read more stories about interesting historical chess masters from the past! Available now on your local Amazon store: