Blackmar Diemer Gambit

You have to admire Spassky's gusto though for playing such a thing in the Candidates.  I don't actually play the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit as white, but I have lost blitz games against it as black.  It strikes me that it might be useful as an occasional surprise weapon at fast time controls to get your opponent out of book.  There used to be a magazine called Blackmar Diemer Gambit World.

Isn't the transposition to a French/Caro the safest way to handle it?

wow! when did i miss this? can someone please post the refutation?

anybody?

Not the whole Najdorf, but some variations.

Maybe if you look at the chessgames.com opening explorer - popularity graph by decades.

If it rapidly went down, it's probably refuted(or proven to be inferior).

I don't have examples.

Riga was talking about the blitz and "taking someone out of book".

Isn't the transpo to Caro/French safe staying in the book way?

Especially if you don't know the BGD and its tricks.

To answer the OP's question: experienced players do not play this gambit against equal opponents.  It can be a useful training ground to get exposed to tactical cheapos.  However if you get addicted to BDG, your overall chess skill will be compromised in the long term.  Problem is that BDG is rather 2 dimensional and limiting.  You are better off with a more versatile gambit with a sounder positional basis.  That's my opinion and my 2 cents.

I have bought Christoph Scheerer's book on the BDG. Now I have to read it.

Does any master use this opening on a regular basis in tournament games? If not you should also not invest time in preparing thid opening for  tournament games. 

If you only play Rapid / Blitz / Bullet any opening could work.  

Absolute nonsense. There was a time when the best players in the world often used to play openings like the Blackmar Diemer that masters don't use regularly now. If they couldn't always work it out over the board you can be sure a under 2200 that hasn't prepared the opening very well will also struggle and may lose. After saying that you contradict yourself by saying any old opening at all will work just because it's rapid or quicker. The fact that you even ask that question just goes to show how little clue you have.    

A part of chess is to understand your opponent. Lower rated chess has a different natural ecology of openings because you are facing a different type of player. Openings that are refuted at the GM level can pose huge problems at lower ones. No GM is going to use the Smith Morra in a top tier game because he'd be laughed off the board. But at the lower levels it's tough to deal with. 

"... I’ve seen more promising players lured into incompetence by this opening than I care to remember. The basic pattern is this - player learns BDG, tries to get it in every game, thus limiting his chess experience (and, since the opening isn’t good, he loses too many games, meaning that his rating stays low and he can’t get games against better players). Nobody who plays good chess plays this line, and nobody who plays good chess ever will. ...” - IM Sam Collins (2005)

https://web.archive.org/web/20140627031504/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen76.pdf

"... Scheerer examines all the key lines and most of the minor ones in painstaking detail, often quoting games of rather dubious quality, Internet games by unknown players, featuring countless bad moves and blunders. Sure, these games serve to illustrate how to punish tactical mistakes, but too many of these games are quoted at length and often to their conclusion, even when much of the remaining moves are irrelevant to understanding the tactical motif. ... despite all the smoke and mirrors, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit still isn't viable beyond club-level or rapid-play games. Yet for those purposes it does represent a fun and entertaining opening that will offer White some chances without being completely sound, mainly because the level of opposition will hardly have sufficient time on the clock or understanding on the board to be able to punish White for his indiscretion. ..." - FM Carsten Hansen (2011)

https://web.archive.org/web/20140627050255/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen150.pdf

@Uhohspaghettioh1: Morra gamit is much more serious than bdg crap. Don't mix both. 

If one plays bdg on my club level with games in databases or if it is well known that the guy from the other club plays bdg all the time, it's easy to prepare something with books or databases. The bdg guy needs to prepare more and more traps keep his opening alive. We are not in the 1980s or earlier anymore where many club players had no clue about openings and literature often was really bad.

Its a waste of time to adopt it. 

I have yet to ever come across a BDG World Magazine.  I know the BDG World Magazine was authored by T. Purser, but I heard he passed away several years ago.  They BDG World Magazine must have been a mail order annual subscription for diehard gambiteers, decades ago.  I'd be willing to bet that rare Anderssen and Morphy materials are more abundant than a complete set of the BDG World Magazine.  There's been plenty of BDG books out there, both old and fairly current, that can be purchased without too much effort, but good luck finding any BDG World Magazine issues. 

In my opinion the legacy of the "BDG Universe" is quite different than what many may think. Let me take a moment and explain. 

A long believed impression of the BDG community is that it's composed of players who want to win by tactics and don't have any knowledge of positional chess/endgames.  I think this view is slightly jaded, due to the fact that weaker players, regardless if they play the BDG or not, are going to lack in all areas of chess understanding as compared to more knowledgeable players.  

I look at the BDG as the last flare of the "Romantic Era" of chess. Sacrifice a pawn, get open lines, and create tactics was a huge part of the Romantic Era.  I can't recall any opening or "Romantic Style" of play, from the time of Emil Josef Diemer, up to the mid 90s that was as popular as the BDG. 

Granted, the BDG wasn't an opening seen at the top level of chess.  Declining the gambit and going into a Caro-Kann or French Defense is not a refutation of the BDG.  The Hubsch and Lemberger methods were known for a while to be the best replies to the BDG.  This is probably a big part why the BDG never gained popularity with top players.  The verdict at the time was that the opening was dubious due to ways that Black could avoid the gambit. Gambiteers kept finding new creative ways to create problems for Black while this "debate" was going on. 

Unfortunately, the computer era has certainly verified this to be true.  The Hubsch (1. d4 Nf6 2. Nc3 d5 3. e4 Nxe4 4. Nxe4 dxe4 5. Bc4 Nc6 6. c3 e5 7. d5 Ne7 8. f3 exf3 9. Nxf3 f6 10. O-O Nf5) basically refutes the gambit 100% If 5. Bc4 then 5...Nc6 and black needs to know very little and White is a pawn down without any compensation. Yes, White has some alternatives to 5. Bc4 but they honestly don't seem to make a whole bit of difference. 

Meanwhile, the Lemberger ( 1. d4 d5 2. e4 dxe4 3. Nc3 e5 4. Nge2 Nc6 5. Be3 Bb4 6. dxe5 Qxd1+ 7. Rxd1) seems to be easy equality so you can't claim it's a refutation. 

At the time the BDG World Magazine was in it's heyday, computers weren't around. Just think of how those "Romantic Era" players would've felt knowing that players around the country, maybe even world, were corresponding by printed press, to share ideas on attacking chess!! Players actually had hardcopy publications that they would get in the mail, set up their chessboard, and play the moves on the board.  Find new ideas and correspond back!  Yes, it took time but it may you think.  Kasparov shares some of my sentiment when he discusses the role of computers on new developing players, even at the IM and GM level, regarding understanding and explanation based on a quantitative computer evaluation. 

Computers certainly have facilitated the learning process, I won't argue that.  I just think that one has to be careful not to limit themselves.  Don't think something is "dubious" just because the engine claims the other side has an advantage right away. It often takes a lot of time and effort to find good ideas that are sound these days, that haven't been seen before. 

There's lots of ideas still unknown, even in the romantic openings, that are possible and even backed by the silicon beasts.  It just not may be the Blackmar Diemer Gambit.