Tennison Gambit

Hey all, just got interested in the Tennison Gambit and im wondering if anyone could give me some help with a few continuations. For those who dont know the Tennison Gambit is 1.nf3 d5 2.e4

3...Qd5 looks like a questionable move (bringing out the queen too early), and 5...Qxg2 looks suicidal.

This is a sort of Budapest Gambit Reversed (it's normally 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.dxe5 Ng4). It should be an advantage for black that he hasn't played c7-c5 yet, since that's not a particularly useful move in the Budapest, on the contrary.

So what about, say, 3...Nf6 4.Bc4 e6 ? I guess that if 3... Bf5, then 4.g4!? is interesting. Also Game Explorer suggests simply 3...e5 taking a stake in the center, must be fine too.

This gambit frequently arises from the scandinavian defense :  1 e4  d5   2 Nf3 dxe4  3 Ng5   and chess assistant gives 3.... e5 as scoring more than 70% for black so I dont believe in the gambit's soundness. black also scores better than 50% with 3.... Nf6  4 Bc4 e6.

I think when a gambit is scoring less than 40% its soundness has to be in doubt, especially when its white scoring less than 40%. ( ok, in the 3.... e5 line anyway )  I do believe though that Keres played this gambit some but geniuses of the game can get away with all sorts of stuff ....

Well, white's average rating was probably a lot lower as well, does Chess Assistant give the ratings?

i play this sometimes in blitz to catch people with

1.Nf3 d5 2.e4 dxe4 3.Ng5 Nf6 4.d3 ed 5.Bxd3 + Nxf7+ Bg6+ +Qxd8

 After a quick glance I only saw 2 games in this gambit in which either player was over 2500, one was Keres as white and he won the other was playing black and he drew against a much lower rated white player. In the games where the ratings are similar ( not more than 50 points different ) black is winning far more often than white and in games where there was a big rating difference with the lower rated winning, again black won more games than white. It does appear that the gambit is less sound than the kings gambit and didnt another thread here establish that the kings gambit is refuted ? 

I have a friend ( also NM ) that only plays this gambit as white against the scandinavian, when I kid him about it he always throws in my face that " Keres played it!" and thats all he can say good about it apparently. However, did Keres play it much ?  I only saw one game with Keres playing it in Chess Assistant.

 Must've been when Keres was young and played a ton of correspondence. He experimented a bunch then.

I only see one example from Keres in megabase as well.

 Thanks Gonnosuke. Apparently my database doesnt include corr games. ( Chess Assistant ) It only has the game with Luck,L which wasnt corr it seems.

I have a book on this opening which still seems to be available: Amazon.com

simply  3.... e5 and I prefer black already. 

My "Big DB 2007" in ChessBase 9 has over a 100 games with the Tennison Gambit and the percentages look OK for White, although I only glanced at the first few opening moves. There's probably a "spoiler" buried somewhere in the analysis tree consisting of a few,several or more lines with very good percentages - for Black

Anyone who wants to play these obscure openings needs something like a current ChessBase "Big" or "Mega" DB with 3 or 4 million games to come up with a decent sampling and/or they need to invest in a book specifically about the obscure opening of their choice. Or they can learn the hard way...

The idea that a strong player cant judge a position simply because he has not played the position is rather silly, especially coming from a high rated player. All I am claiming is that I believe black is at least equal after 3... e5 and if I had to play this position for one side or the other I would prefer to play black. I only found 4 games with 4 h4 and the highest rated player in any of these games was under 2100. I would play 4...h6 and after 5 Nxe4 Nf6 and black has no real problems imo. 

I dont think black has equality after 4 or 5 moves in any of the mainlines of the Spanish. Here I think black does have equality ( at least ) after only 4 or 5 moves. This means white has failed in the opening as he has thrown away any advantage he has with the first move.... 

Just to be clear... I believe the tennison gambit is inferior to the main lines of the scandinavian if you want to play for advantage as white..... 

1. e4 d5  2. Nf3 dxe4  3. Ng5 e5  4. d4  (threatening Bc4)

How does black counter?

Best defense in my opinion is Nc6 (after Ng5). White has a knight on g5 square simply to win back a pawn and black gains a lead in development. Tennison gambit is good against pawn-grabbing materialistic players but will not work against opponenets who play simple developing moves.