Underrated chess opening

Sort:

salam786786

Jan 3, 2025

Doe anyone play The Reti Gambit? It's my favorite opening and it helped win tons of games yet no one has played it against me and it seems to be really slept on.

The idea of it is to sacrifice your c pawn to get rid of one of your opponents center pawns. Then you develop your pieces whilst trying to regain you pawn. If your opponent tries to defend their pawn then there a a variety of traps you can use and in the end you have a completely winning position

crazedrat1000

Jan 3, 2025

It's a good fun line but that's the main issue with it, people usually play the other lines, you must have a very broad repertoire as a Reti player. Still a good opening but start with 1. d4 would be my recommendation.

Though the other issue I have with 2. c4 there is black can play e6 or c6 and get his slav or QGD usually, maybe with a few small b3 twists thrown in, ceding some objective edge, but nothing that interesting. If you want to try something radical... you can transpose to the nimzo larsen attack with 2. b3. If you're gonna go b3 why not go all-out with it - back when I was messing around with the Reti this is how I played vs. d5.

Another cool line here is 2. Nc3 - the reversed mexican defense. This transposes w/ the Van Geet.

Bear in mind that you usually play a similar system against 1... Nf6 as well.