How NOT to respond to the King's Gambit!

 It is fun! That's part of the whole point!! I just can't help myself in fact - as soon as I see 1. ... e5 I have a hard time forcing myself to play anything else but 2. f4!?

There are so many winning lines with it, that I remain convinced to this day that there is a way to force a win with it EVERY time. In the other thread mentioned, we are exploring the best defences to it, and the best counters to those defences! It may take a long time (as it already has!), but I'm sure that when it's over, I will have the first 10-15 moves of every KG game possible completely covered, meaning that I will be able to capitalize on it every time and make winning plays!...

I've been at it for a while, but I feel that I am now much closer. And if nothing else, it has made for some amazing games and LOTS of fun in the process!

I'll enjoy it while it lasts, as one day I fear no oponent will dare play 1. ... e5 to the e4 opening, in light of the KG.

Ambitious perhaps, but a dream worth investigating...

I play this opening frequently in live chess and consider 2. ... Qh4 to be a beginner's oversight (when that move should be reserved if white forgets to bring out Kf3).  However, after viewing the orignal game in question and Scarblac's comments, I think that move is fine if played like billsol.  I think billsol's problem in the original game was his castling queenside, at least when he did it.  But even that could have been fine until move 21 or so when he moved his Knight instead of capturing a loose pawn and activating his rook.

I consider the gambit to be less than middling in theory, but it makes up for it in live play because its infrequency of play challenges black and allows for more tactical advantage than more common openings.  Personally, I love that it tends to open up the f-file.

I hate to break the news to you but e5 is not obligatory.  It can be fun but it is not essential to reaching any rating level.  Many players only have one answer to e4 and its often e6, c6, or c5, especially the later.

 As white I play d4. With black i do the scicilian. I tried a king's gambit tourney to get a taste for it. As white, i had to spend to much time being defensive to be successful. I only say the Qh5+ is a valid threat after exf4 because i fell victim to it. I know that Nf3 is the whites best move, because it is a forced move. There are not enough gains to be had with this opening, at least for now. Till i can calculate advance variations out more than 5 moves, I will avoid it.

Yeah, ...Qh4+ is just very dubious, if not plain bad. Black must have thought that f4 must have been punished but you obviously you can't just refute an opening with a queen check. he probably found this related to the fool's mate, when of course Qh4 is mate. I don't play ...e5 anyway, white can do too many wild things while I don't like defending against the Bc4 and Bb5 games anyways because white retains an initiative. ...c5 is very risky as well since white can make some huge attacks. I just play ...e6 and I get good centers with it and I'm very comfortable with it. It's actually pretty hard to attack the french because the center usually cracks first.

Force a win with the KG? Fischer once said that the KG lost by force, although he still played it sometimes. I think that was very exagerated though but I'm pretty sure he said that and looked for a refutation because he lost to spassky who had played the King's Gambit.

Not saying the early queen move is right, I'm not good enough to know, but here is a recent 2008 game where it was played to a draw against a 2400+ player. As  KG player myself, the one time my opponent played 2.Qh4 OTB, I found myself thrown off my rythm and had trouble figuring out how to respond (other than the obvious g3).

Why didn't black do 13 Qxe4 :S?

in that game black probably played the moves you were supposed to.

Good question.  I think the normal player like us would respond to Qxe4 with Qe2, then the exchange to queens and Black is doing great.  But a GM/IM level KG player would play Kf2!? instead.  It is really hard to play these lines and get comfortable with the white king wandering all over the board, but it seems to happen all the time in the KG.  By taking the e pawn, black was probably worried about opening dangerous lines of attack to the king.  I'm not sure his move was better, but I think Kf2 would explain why black choose not to take the pawn.

The point of 2...Qh4+ is to force 3.g3 as it is weakens Whites kingside position. A quick look at the game above shows White developing his light squared bishop to c4, not g2. Remember, Whites pawn is on e4 so placing the bishop on g2 'to fill the gap' is not ideal and not really in the spirit of the KG.

Personally I would not play the line as Black but it is playable.

2. ...Qh4+ is an unusual but playable defense.  The Keene Variation.  Not a terrible way to decline as it will take a lot of KG players, to their chagrin, out of the book.

4. ...d6 is the mainline over Qxe5?

If Black gives me e5 they will be playing KG.  It is true that a lot of pretty strong players wont't play e5 - ever.  This is okay, because I don't overplay KG even though it is my 'choice' opening.  Have to be prepared for French, Sicilian, Caro-Kann, Pirc, Robatsch..... Center Counter or Scandinavian seems to be hot now.

There is some logic behind refusing e5 and choosing the opening.  This alone can be an equalizing factor for Black.

The primary reason why the KG is not played very often at the highest levels is that it is not rich in plans.

2ndly, the line in question in this game is call the Keene variation, inasmuch as Raymond Keene is the highest ranking player to have chosen Black's early queen sortie and return to e7. While Keene never has been among the truly elite in OTB play, he is no slouch. So comments about 'moving the queen out this early is a patzer move' are not really appropriate. Indeed the Scandinavian is played from time to time by the very, very best.

3rdly, Qxe5? is a mistake, scoring a mere 20% for Black in the ChessBase database. But ... d6 instead scores 50% in 88 games. Only a mere 5 games were contested in which BOTH players were 2400+, but the outcome in those was ... 50%.

Finally, one will NOT become a great player without understanding the principles in ALL the major openings. One will certainly not become a great player without exceptional tactical abilities, like the abilities one can hone playing either side of the KG. Indeed, Bobby Fischer assayed the KG lines some 25 times (from the White side) in his early career. His score: 84%.

what about 14. Bh3 ?

Tarius... that's quite a lecture. It's nonsense, too. Flexibility of mind is a quality great chess players possess. You, on the other hand demonstrate here that you are boxed in by principles and rules  -- refusing to even consider an alternate idea -- it will limit your game. Games are played at the absolute top level (Michael Adams, Veselin Topalov) that flout the cherished rules of the opening patzers cling to.

Here's a relatively recent game played between two South American Grandmasters that uses your "fool's mate" line in the King's Gambit -- Black, the Grandmaster chump, brings out his Queen too early...if he only understood chess as well as you, eh? Black wins.

(in my variation annotation at the very end it seems I make some notation errors. Nc6+ should be Nc5+ etc. Apologies.)

This doesn't prove it's good though.  GM Seirawan says it's bad.

Good? I never said anything about good. It's playable. GM Seriawan can say what he wants -- he's well respected as a player and a teacher... but IMHO if GM Seirawan calls it bad it's because he's speaking simplistically to avoid cluttering up his point... his point is: Don't go dorking around with your Queen because you don't know what else to do. Yes, the Queen is powerful and can make lots of aggressive seeming threats (that don't actually amount to anything) but that's not good chess.

I don't disagree with that, at all. I have a problem with saying, "it's a bad move" and taking that literally, because it's not literally a bad move. It's a bad move when beginners play it with bad (or non-existent) reasoning behind it...it's a bad move when there's no planning, when it's just a move thrown against the wall to see what sticks.

Beginners need to make moves that remain playable despite the beginner being able to look only one half-move ahead, and, unclearly at that. These are called "developing" moves. 

One must not extrapolate from that to: the moves that work for beginners are the best moves for all; and moves which lead beginners to ruin are horrible moves which no self-respecting master would ever play. 

No. It's not true! Master's play sharp sharp lines... lines which are predicated on a long look into the position and which offer little or no room for error. 

I understand why chess is taught the way it is... I also don't think it's perfect.

I'm sure that growth in chess can be hindered by clinging to beginner's ways when one is actually ready for more a demanding approach to the game.

Ok then... why don't we put our money where our mouth is then? JG27Pyth - I challenge you to a match under the premise that I shall play white and that my first 2 moves shall be e4 and f4 respectively, while yours shall be e5 and Qh4+ 

If you are SO certain of yourself, bring it on and stop clinging to academia!!!

Well what of it?....

Well, how else to best settle it but on the board!? Playing chess... that's what we're here to do right?

normally i'd play 2...Qf6, but heck, i'd happily play Qh4+ as well. doesnt seem too bad to me.