Win with the Halloween Gambit!!!

Thank you!

I'm a big fan of this opening, I play it whenever I have the opportunity (unless I have to work on other openings).

Thank you! This comment is me too: I play it whenever I have the opportunity!

one day ill play the halloween gambit hehehehe

LOL imagine being offered a knight for just one pawn at move four, and the opponent just hoping to get the piece back at some time, some place.

The Muzio gambit offers a knight for no pawn at move 5 and is considered pretty respectable.   

Dude, you've already said the same thing - with varying degrees of sarcasm and snark.  We get it, you don't like it.  We also all can see you have the little red box next to your name, so you know how to play chess.  But nobody is asking you to be the gatekeeper of the Halloween Gambit.  It's a fun gambit, if you don't like it okay, move along. 

I think as a IM pfren is/was a lot better than 2000. 2000 is still basically rubbish in terms of clinically exploiting and capitalizing on openings, sure they may make some use of opening advantage but it's nothing like the importance of openings for 2300 and up, it wouldn't be some wild thing for them to lose to a terrible opening, especially a trappy one. IM is meant to be around 2400 as a rule of thumb, so pfren must have been pretty decent.  

2000 also isn't rated "far higher" than a 1800 player, the 1800 player would be expected to around 1/3rd of the time. It's the same difference as between a 1400 player and a 1600 player, it's just the psychological significance of the 2000 that makes it sound high, and the fact one of the players is slightly below 1800.  

If you subscribe to hulu it’s huluween gambit 

I don't just think so, I know so. According to the normal elo formula a 400 point rating difference gives about 10% success for the lower rated player. A 200 point difference should be about the square root of that - ie. a very rough ballpark of 1/3rd of the time. 

In particular in any ratings system that hasn't been tampered with the difference in rating leads to the same success vs failure for each player no matter where they are on the scale. So eg. the success rate for the lower player between 1400 and 1600 players should be the same as between 2600 and 2800 players. FIDE uses this traditional elo rating system, I believe chess.com uses some more logistic distribution formula or something like that but it's the same basic idea.  

... and the timer is set to weekly, or monthly?

why

Let's be real, White almost never gets his knight back. But on the bright side he's still winning! You don't play this because you wish to reach an endgame after hours of micro millimetric positional improvements you know.

Maybe the real compensation for the knight is the frens and pfrens we made along the way. 

Is the Halloween really that bad of an opening? I still play it OTB and have a good 300 blitz games with it here on chess.com, without getting too unbearable of positions. There are a few lines such as 7...c6 or 7...d5 that allow black to not get squashed, but white still gets 1-2 pawns or 2 minor for rook back, along with a space advantage and some attacking chances. Importantly, its a fun gambit! In the 5...Ng6 lines white gets light square attacks (Bc4+Qf3 atk f7, or f4-f5 launch), or 5...Nc6 and white gets dark square attacks when the pawns roll up to d6 with some Nb5-c7 threats. The most difficulty the gambit appears to face is the declined 5...Nc6 6.d5 Bb4!! 7.dxc6 Nxe4. In blitz it seems to have merit at the very least in "compensation on the clock," and even OTB in quick tournaments, say, 30 or 45 D5, the psychological pressure of defending prompts returning the knight, especially once f4-f5 hits the board. Objectively, against an engine, with absolutely perfect play black is probably winning, but humans are fallible, especially in the face of rare and sharp openings. Perhaps that's a hope-chess approach - too much social rather than formal science, but trickery can be a win condition! I'm sure Tal would agree 🙂

White has chances, definitely. 

But he is not winning, because "winning" would be an objective assessment of the position.

Sacrificing your knight on move four when your opponent plays sound chess would never be "winning".

Chances of trolling hehehe....

This may well be true... in another universe.

Hahahaha lol at people who genuinely think the halloween gambit can be busted on the basis of general principles, without knowing it before. Dogmatism gets you too far and yes I can somewhat understand your impression (which was mine when I saw some dude playing it for the first time).

Halloween was playable in correspondence chess until computer centaur chess became the norm and the refutation lines aren't obvious at all (to people who would claim that the lines are logical.  What would have you done before the computer era, with your lone brain and your books?)

I've been promised disaster a lot but keep winning against people who are in disgust, why is that?