Epic Danish Gambit game!

When my dad died, he held me in his arms and told me a piece of advice I will never forget:

"Son, whatever you do, never play f3 in the Danish gambit."

@xman720 if that really happened it's extremely touching. Useful in any case, though

Well, I thought it would help you remember it. The problem is, I came back to chess two days ago after not playing for a few months, at least four or  five. So I can't really give more specific analysis without making a fool of myself, but I'll try to explain.

The idea with the danish gambit is to open the board completely with black undeveloped. Here is an example of danish gambit gone right:

White won because he got all of his pieces out on an open board and black traded off his only developed pieces.

The key is the open board. This is very strange if you are first learning but- in a lot of e4 d4 gambits, you actually need the e4 pawn gone, even if you get no material in return. The open e file is crucial. Defending it with f3 not only stops developing a piece, but also hurts your attacking chances. Honestly, even with a knight, two bishops, and a queen out, there is not much attacking white can do with the a7-g1 diagonal open to his king and no open e file to attack black down. Black just develops and crushes white.

This is also why you don't play e6. When you played e6 you attacked your opponent's knight- but look what happened. You moved one of your pieces for the second time, and your opponent go to move his queen off the back row. So you lost development advantage, which is the point of the danish.

After Nf6 there are a few lines for white, but I like to play Nf3. Ne2 is also possible. Now that I think about it, possible better since it defends the c3 square. Of course its all loosing, we are trying to trick black.

This is why I like Nf3, since my only chance of winning is for black to make a mistake, I want him to make a mistake and take that e pawn which is what I'm trying to get rid of.

The danish gambit is not good though. If you play against an engine or a anyone who knows it really, this is what you will face:

This is why, as a piece of trivia, you will never find a Danish Gambit game by paul morphy. People like to think of him as an attacker, but ultimately he was a good chess player and played lines that were winning. The danish gambit is not winning.

Thanks for taking the time to provide a deep insight on the opening. Very interesting examples everyone can benefit from.

Mine was an example of danish gambit gone wrong, that still eventually turned into a win, as the loss of pieces was compensated by the fact that opponent's pieces were still "trapped" in their corner. No surprise for me that it doesn't work with high elos, but I have to admit having won 80-85% of accepted danish gambit games at my level. I would say it gives trouble up to 1600.

Nice checkmate!

Why would you take a level ending when white is lost after Bc4?

White's not.

Holding the White pieces is a Serbian Grandmaster. Presuming a memory lapse I'm wrong, however with a likelihood close to nil.

If you enter the moves ending with Bc4 into a chess engine and have it play against itself, white will lose 100 our of 100 games. White is strategically lost after sacrificing 2 queenside pawns. White often loses another and the right to castle while black has no problems. I would say it's a blunder to transpose into a drawn endgame with black when your opponent has sacrificed two pawns and king safety.

Okay, but more importantly I didn't just make this up. Some masters do agree with you and say that the danish is bad becaus black gets easy equality. However the majority agree with me and say that white is strategically lost after playing the danish and is fighting for a draw.