Grand Prix meets the King's Gambit?

In my first game here my opponent played an unusual move (3... e5) against my Grand Prix setup.

I didn't want to play 4. fxe5 because I felt that was somewhat liberating for black, so I played 4. Bb5+ -- reasoning that I wanted to play d3 to defend my f-pawn, but I didn't want to block my light-squared bishop in the process.

For a moment though I pondered just playing 4. Nf3 and gambiting the f-pawn.

What do you think about what I did play and the 4. Nf3 option?

I would play 4.Bc4 exf4, followed by 5.Nf3 and 6.O-O.

You would have your King's Gambit, and much better development. Black would have an extra pawn but a weak and backward "d" pawn. Verdict - White has a better game.

Barefoot_Player

I think Nf3 is right. IMO, it's more similar to a Vienna than a KG (or Sicilian!), and if Black plays exf and tries to hold the pawn White gets an easy game.

Thanks for the responses guys. I took a little time to analyse with the comp, and, either way you choose to gambit the pawn, it looks very interesting.

Of course I'll probably never see 3...e5 ever again

What's wrong with fxe5? You get the d5 square for good (the knight can never be chased from it by a pawn) and the half-open f-file. Surely that can't be bad?

I now don't think there was anything wrong with fxe5. Just, during the game, it didn't seem like the move I thought white should play. I didn't like the Idea that after dxe5 black would get the semi-open d-file or that the d6 pawn would no longer be obstructing his bishop etc. It just seemed somewhat freeing for black.

In other words, I just saw the bad and not the good in it.

Yeah I'm no expert I was just curious - Bc4 and Nf3 seem fine as well

Kintoki, you know what I mean.

3...e5 is pretty rare.  I play 3...e6 and do OK with that line.  I did find one trappy game with 3...e5.

Thanks for the game you posted.

Looks to me like white played pretty badly with 10.Nd5. I mean every halfway decent player knows that trick where knight takes on d4 or d5 and then returns to recapture the bishop on e2 or e7 right? The only explanation I can think of is white must have thought he could play Nd5 anyway as he'd trap black's knight after it went to d4, but he missed 13...b5 in his calculation.

I noticed another crazy move black might have played instead of 13...b5: 13...Be3!?. I'll have to feed it to Rybka so it can tell me my idea is crap

Ooops. Now that I've looked at it more, I see that 10.Nd5 isn't bad at all: 10. Nd5 Nxd5 11. Bxd5 and black can't play Bxg5 because of mate on f7. So it looks like 11.exd5 was the culprit.

Why not f5 gaining space on the king side and restricting the light bishop, then d3, and eventually park the knight on d5.  That seems more in line with the GPA's kingside ambitions

hmmm, rybka seems to hate my idea - it like fxe5

oh well, thats why I'm not rybka

I cheated on this one and tried the idea out on Rybka.

It appear to be too early for such a move. The pressure is off black's center and he can work to undermine white's center.

e.g.:

Or, in other lines black could play g6.

You wrote your second post while I was writing mine