King's gambit or Danish gambit?

King's Gambit- Give away king safety for center control and Attack on opponent f - pawn

Pros
It's an exhilarating and fun opening
White goes for the initiative
Cons
Black has many different options to choose from
White's king can become exposed
It's a risky opening

How To Play Against The King's Gambit:

1.King's Gambit Declined: Falkbeer Countergambit
2.King's Gambit Accepted: Fischer Defense
3.King's Gambit Accepted: Cozio Variation

King's Gambit Declined: Falkbeer CountergambitIf you want to respond to White's aggressive opening by escalating the aggression, you can opt for the Falkbeer Countergambit. As stated above, it arises after 1.e4 e5 2.f4 d5. Black's idea is to open up the center and explore the weakness White created around their king after the f2-f4 push.

King's Gambit Accepted: Fischer DefenseThis variation became famous after Fischer published an article titled "A Bust to the King's Gambit." If you want to accept the gambit and White chooses to develop the g1-knight, this is a great way to get a good position. The variation goes 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 d6, and Black will usually play the g7-g5 push to keep the f4-pawn or build pressure on the kingside. With 381 games in our database, White wins 35%, draws 15%, and Black wins 50%.

King's Gambit Accepted: Cozio VariationAfter accepting the gambit, White can develop the light-squared bishop before the knight. For this line, the Cozio Variation scores well. After 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Bc4 Qh4+ 4.Kf1 d6, White can no longer castle. From this position, White wins 28% of the games, draws 21%, and Black wins 52%.

Danish Gambit - The Danish is a Chess opening where White sacrifices a few pawns in order to gain time and launch an early attack on Black.

Pros
It's a good opening for aggressive players.
It can catch the unprepared opponent off guard.
It can lead to quick wins.
Cons
Black can easily equalize if they know some theory.
White must be comfortable playing with a pawn down or with an isolated pawn.

Players like Alexander Alekhine, Joseph Henry Blackburne, and Frank Marshall used the opening. However, the gambit fell in popularity around the 1920s, when more players learned how to defend with Black.

Nowadays, the opening is rare among the chess elite. Yet, you can still see aggressive players employing the Danish Gambit at lower levels.

The main reasons to play the Danish Gambit:

It may come as a surprise to your opponent.

White can gain very strong bishops on the long diagonal

White’s Ideas
Get Dual Bishops on Long Diagonals
If White can get both of his bishops on the long diagonal, this can cause a lot of problems for Black and is the main goal/objective for White in this opening.

When playing the Danish Gambit, White needs to commit to sacrificing pawns.

If White immediately takes back the pawn first pawn offered with the Queen, then White’s Queen can just be chased away (causing White to lose his ability to get both bishops on the long diagonal).

When playing the Danish Gambit, White needs to commit to sacrificing pawns.

If White takes back the second given pawn with the Knight, then White is really blunting his attacking chances since he needs to focus on getting those bishops on the long diagonal.

Black’s IdeasThe saying that there is no such as a free lunch really holds true in the case of the Danish Gambit.

While Black gains two free pawns, it really requires a lot of precise play to be able to keep that advantage and avoid the onslaught attack White will launch.

It is probably better for most players to avoid accepting White’s free pawns and prevent him from getting both bishops on the long diagonal.

If Black does decide to take both of White’s pawns, with perfect play, Black ends up needing to give them both back anyway.

Plus Black would have to know (memorize) the exact line to get back to an even position versus.

It’s best for Black to avoid this line and avoid taking White’s pawns all together since there are a lot of tricky situations Black needs to avoid.

If Black does decide to take both of White’s pawns, it’s really hard to defend the resulting position.

Most of the time, White will end up with some devastating attack against black.

I would definitely recommend the Danish Gambit. It’s more likely to be accepted at your level, and easier to attack with. The King’s Gambit creates a vulnerable kingside, while the Danish Gambit gives up two pawns, which is much easier to compensate for at the beginner-intermediate level.

If you know how to utilize the bishop pair, you should be able to have success with the Danish Gambit.

They both suck!

@1

"the goal is not necessarily a quick victory, but even just a positional advantage?"
++ In that case Ruy Lopez, Giuoco Pianissimo, Scotch Game, Four Knights Opening, Vienna Game are all better choices.

Danish becoz people will accept it more. King's gambit is also fine. It totally just depends on you.

I play kings gambit and love it and have a slight winning stats with it, but in watching a couple videos for the double danish which is what I want to test drive, along with the regular one, it looks soooooo wide open and aggressive, and I wa surprised at how intuitive it is with me often planning moves before GM Igor or Levy made them. Kings gambit can lead to very closed positions, and falkbeer counter gambit is VERY annoying.

Playing the double danish can also transpose to the 2x goering gambit which is the strongest scotch line by a couple percent too. A lot of players hate the danish and scotch.

With kings gambit, a lot of games take wiggling before I can attack whereas the double D pretty much attacks any piece that sticks its head up with a bishop pair aimed at 0-0 and nothing but wide open files againstpotential 0-0-0s.

It's the rolls Royce of "get them pawns outta my way!" gambits. I just dismissed it years ago because it gives so many pawns up, fianchettos the QB, an opens the QS, but now that i have 300 points more experience, i can see the beauty in the raw aggression and potential of the open files.

Bonding deeply with, at first ugly ugly ugly 'til I started playing it smith morra gambit with its open c, d & e files and now what looked ugly in the danish is attacking potential.

It'd probably be easier to adopt than an entire 1.e5 e5 repertoire, but kings gambit is familiar and playable while I DESPISE the scandinavian even if my overall stats are favorable in it. It's just not open and aggressive like rousseau & jaenisch/schliemann and doesn't have a semi-open f file like kings gambit and BDG related lines.

As a bonus, danish has even more surprise value making black's already challenging defense even harder not t9 blunder.

There is no more open, aggressive and SIMPLE looking gambit that I know of than double danish.

In a video, Levy and Nakumura rated danish as unstoppable and kings gambit as suspect rating the top gambits. I was a bit offended as kings gambit is my happy place after getting stuck playing lines a I hate 2-3 times in a row, but black can make life difficult in it many ways when he isn't getting crushed in a mini

I would think too at lower levels, the danish would be even MORE vicious against players who haven't sharpened their vision, tactics or defensive skills yet.

On the other side of the coin, kings gambit attacks on f7 laid the groundwork for gedult blackmar diemer scandinavians, alapin diemer french, which accidentally led me to CRUSHING carokanns with the mieses just doing what comes natural with Bc4, Nf3 and a semi-open f file.

It would be a lot harder to translate danish plans to other openings I bet.

While both ideas are good kings gambit can be foiled easy

The question of which is better at the elo specified, I'm not qualified to say. I started out learning gambits early and while rated low.I learned the King's Gambit first and liked it very much, later I discover the Danish and was smitten and it's all I play as white. Which is better at a certain elo should be rephrased as which type of gambit are you more comfortable with. Whereas the Kings Gambit is aggressive, its more restrained than the Danish and while both players feel under pressure there is still a feeling of the game being under control. The Danish is another beast altogether; it often descends into chaos with the board looking like someone just dumped the pieces on the board and set up the position wherever things landed. The Danish is much more risky than the Kings, with few draws and either big wins or catastrophic defeats. How much risk you are comfortable with will determine which is "best".