Latvian Gambit

I have recently taken an interest in the Latvian Gambit. Any thoughts?

I think simply 3 Nxe5 is the most difficult line for black. I agree with gent that while its a good otb weapon its a very risky choice when your opponents can use books and data bases to find the best lines.

I agree.

i played dozens & dozens of slow internet games with Black & did pretty well in the last few years. i found out it's not such a good idea to enter the long 3Bc4 fe 4N:e5 Qg5 (rather than ...d5) variation; & finally i went back to 3N:e5 Qf6 after some upsets (but many successes) playing 3...Nc6!? which the better players kept answering with 4N:c6.

on the whole, it's a lot more fun than the Ruy Lopez.

I'm from Latvia, but I've never used this opening... Funny...

Ive seen some compelling books/articles for destroying the Latvian, but I would like to hear what Nunn has to say.

do you know where I could find that?

cool, after 1.e4 e5 2.nf3 f5 3.nxe5 nc6  I thought the only good moves were nxc6 or qh5+ (which both are good) but 4.d4! looks much stronger, I will add that improvement to my gambit-buster pack :)

great opening...but I'd never play it in a correspondence game.only in otb and live.

lol, calm down. He's not saying he's going to win every time he gets that variation, he just thinks that he will overall do well with it.

And why are you so mad at Silman? He says that it's perfectly ok to play the latvian gambit at lower levels (even at higher levels it may be playable, though very risky and hardly ideal), but that that doesn't change the overall evaluation of the opening (seriously, would do you want him to do, pretend that the latvian leads to equality and ignore every strong line for white?). What if you scholar mated some newbie? Would you consider the opening you used to do that so awesome?

Correspondence games between chess.com 1800s proves ZERO, absolutely ZERO, about the objective worth of the opening.

I get the feeling you just want to embarras him by beating him with an opening you both know to be suspect. To be honest pshychologically it is slightly annoying for me to lose to openings I know aren't good, but still at the end of the day all it shows is that most of the time at lower levels, the opening doesn't determine the result of the game, because there's so much room for error later on, but again, that doesn't make it an objectively strong opening, which is what you seemed to be arguing for, right?

hey Gambitking,let's play a latvian gambit!

I wrote you and said I only wanted to play it rated. unrated means nothing. so youre making it seem like youre a tough guy for "challenging" me to an unrated game? and me turning that down.

I screw around too much on unrated games because they are worthless. Im screwing around now enough as it is.

yeah, I am just playing around on here too... when I say stuff like "gambit buster pack" Im only joking around.. its all good

"NO ONE CARES about the 'objective worth' of the opening... at the end of the day, the ONLY thing that matters is who got checkmated, and who didn't!"

In fact I had a feeling you felt this way all along... but what made me question this is how you act as if the game he declined was in fact going to prove something.

This sentence makes perfect sense... so like I said, just leave it at that!!

"So the main reason why I’m so adamant about pointing out that challenge was refused, is that if someone like admiralackbar was going to make the claims he did in the first place, he should have been willing to back them up! I have no grudge against him—in fact, I want to be his friend… and friends should be able to have fun playing chess together!"

Back it up?? I thought you agreed that there is nothing for two 1800 cc players to back up! So if he were to win the game you would say he "backed it up"? Well no, just as winning as black in the latvian proves nothing, random wins as white in the latvian (unless they are high level games) doesn't really prove anything either. The closest a human can come to proving anything is with analysis, which is why Silman is providing analysis. Silman never said he would beat anyone in the world with the latvian (would beating random people refute the latvian? No, the only way to refute the latvian is to provide responses to black's BEST moves, and in a game you don't know what move black will play, the games are mostly there just to illustrate ideas) , all he did was show analysis that shows the latvian to be suspect. He probably called it "garbage" a few times; mean word I guess, but so what? Silman does appreciate classical chess, as he clearly shown in some of his lessons on a lead in development (all about sacing and attacking actually, even though it doesn't make the bulk of his books), what he probably doesn't have respect for is playing unsound openings. Now, you can play all the unsound openings all you want, but can you really blame Silman for not liking unsound openings? He merely doesn't want to take the risk that the opponent does know what he's doing and lose the game not even based on chess skill, but the opening. At his level, openings are more likely to literally decide the game depending on how unsound they are.

"Really, all I like is a good game of chess… I hope you’ll agree that there’s nothing better than two opponents clashing with each other, and giving it all they’ve got in battle—and later, enjoying each other’s company and analysis! I have respect for that, whoever wins. It’s why I want to be known as someone who ALWAYS is willing to back up what they say—and win or lose, what matters in the end for me is that I had fun, and learned at the same time!"

Me too, but keep in mind there are many ways of having a good fight, you don't have to play the latvian for that.

"Thirdly, he can use the word ‘inferior’, and it has meaning to him… but to me, it’s meaningless! If you think that you can make a case that me challenging people with the Latvian Gambit is in some way being ‘condescending’ or ‘handicapping myself’ you’re being ridiculous! I have a much BETTER record with the Latvian Gambit than with other openings!"

It doesn't have to affect you! Indeed "inferior" has more meaning to strong players than weaker players.

"First of all, if it’s embarrassing for you to play chess, you shouldn’t be on this site. I’ve lost as many as I’ve won here (literally!) and I’ve lost quite a few recently—but it’s not embarrassing, it’s a learning experience!"

Some losses can be embarrasing why not, but of course I get over them. Sorry gambitking, I like chess too much to not play on this site .

"When he was called out for this, he totally ignored new analysis that had come up with the excuse that “you guys don’t expect me to be keeping up with this stuff”… yet at the same time, he used words like ‘mad dog’, ‘junk’, ‘caveman’, and ‘stupid’ to refer to those who played these gambits!"

You know, I understand this, and clearly Silman has some bias against openings like these, but really, do you think it's so likely that these new developments will hold? Possibly, but not very likely. How unfair it is to skim over analysis trying to find the slightest flaw, post a comment about it, and your work is done. Compare that to the work of the refuter. lol, can you forgive him?

"Your logic is quite suspect, actually..."

Ok, basically I acted as if you cared about the objective worth of the opening, only because of how you got mad when the guy declined your challenge. When you say "back it up", how does it not have anything to do with the objective worth of the position? What does it mean? If you just want to play a game of chess, that's not backing anything up, it's just playing an interesting position. If he is backing something up, then that means you must think winning or losing will prove the analysis right or wrong.

Because I of course know where you stand about objective strength of an opening (you don't care), but I had to make a post assuming you didn't because what you said seemed to contradict this view.

"If you think that I’m wanting to do is ‘embarrass’ someone by beating them with a ‘known inferior’ opening, you’re sadly mistaken."

Well, judging by your other posts (especially that david game), I thought it was possible.

I mean dragondavid.

"What REALLY determines 'objective strength' is just what I've said before--an actual game between two opponents--'a clash of the ideologies', if you will! Let me put it this way:"

Why objective stength in quotes? In no way does an actual game determine objective strength. Like I said, the game is likely to be decided by a random blunder, so unless it's a high level game, it's simply an example of what can happen, not any more of a refutation than in analysis. The only time where actual play can determine objective strength is if the final position reached in the analysis is so unclear that a definite assesment can't be given, making the answer more clear in actual play. However, the ones Silman looked at were tactical sure, but the tactics always seemed to favor white (which makes sense, black having weakened his kingside).

"1. The 'grandmasters' out there are often NOT the ones coming up with interesting improvements in 'discredited' lines such as the Latvian Gambit... it's much more likely to be the 'specialist gambiteers' out there who spend many a late night coming up with wierd and crazy ideas!"

That's true to an extent (although there are probably some weaker GM's who analyze the opening), BUT, those ideas are simply very likely to be wrong. I mean can you imagine how many latvian lovers probably came up with random lines, yet most (it takes time to refute everything lol!) of it has been just refuted, and most likely since tactics tend to favor white in this opening the new lines will probably become refuted too. I'm sure you hate how I assume this, but actually it's probably a pretty safe assumption. Sure it would be nice if Silman spent his life analyzing the Lativan, but unfortunately he doesn't want to waste his life on it so don't count on an IM to answer all of your questions! Unlike you, there are much more important chess related things on his mind.

"2. Kacparov beat Nigel Short, as we all know! I'm sure that at least some of you guys have beat him before... and I have what I think should be a winning position against him now in a Latvian Gambit tournament game (he beat me the first one)! So it's not like we're THAT much worse... heh, I'm kidding--I'm reminded daily of how bad I am! But, the third point holds regardless!"

I did not know this. Was it in blitz?

"I'd much rather *prove* its worth in games rather than sit back and talk about it!"

Once again, low level games only can prove practical worth, not objective. Your story about soccer doesn't apply to chess, because the team symbolizes the chess player, not the chess opening!

"Are you kidding me? I'd HATE it if Silman wasted his life on the Latvian Gambit--first of all, he's written SO many good books--one of which I have... and second of all, his opinions on gambit openings in general aren't that useful to me, anyways LOL!"

So you understand then that he can't get to all of your "refutations", correct?? This is very annoying, because you completely contradict yourself. You first (seem to) complain that he doesn't spend enough time on your latvian, then take that back, yet how could you really not care about silman spending time on it when you're so mad that he doesn't look at your refutations quick enough? Are you really that confident that a little novelty that may not be refuted in 2 moves is really so likely to change everyone's opinion on the variation? In an opening like the latvian, it isn't.

"Oh, and if the football team is the chess player, then I guess that their style of play and the formation and tactics that they use is the opening--so maybe the analogy isn't that bad after all!"

No, I would say the style of the football team corresponds to, quite simply, the style/skill of the chess player. I don't think there really is a good example in sports for an opening in chess. The best one I can come up with is the serve in tennis, server being white, receiver being black, when the server has some options of how to utilize his advantage: serve it really fast (where to put it is another decision), give yourself time to come up to the net (serve and volley), or hit a decent but safe shot so that you don't get too many faults. But still, this is a shallow connection.

"But I guess like most things in life, we'll just have to agree to disagree"

That's indeed the easiest way.

And what exactly do we disagree on? The only thing subjective here is how much one thinks unsound openings are worth playing. However everything else (like how blunder filled games aren't so conclusive about an opening's worth) is common sense.

That's practical value, not objective. And I'm not trying to make objective value look like it's the most important thing, because it isn't always. Objective value is simply the "truth" of the position, how well it holds against best play, and it's fun to find it out. This starts to become important at high levels, which is why many high level players critisize it, and why so few GM's dare to play it.