Sacrifice Knight to prevent opponent castling?

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pcwildman
Opening moves 4 or 5- Knight takes king's bishop's pawn at F7. Opponent is forced to take with king thus preventing castling and exposing him on the front line. I've been toying with this one and I'm just wondering if anyone thinks it's worth it. It was a great fear earlier in the game I'm playing now as black (the move wasn't made). I like that Knight on G5. I'm definitely going to use that. Very threatening.
Kbz10troy

A few people have played that against me and I won each of the games, so I don't think too highly of it.

blueemu

Exposing the opponent's King is worthless if you've given up your developed pieces in order to expose them. What will you be attacking the King with?

pcwildman

Thank you. I was kind of thinking along the same lines as what you guys said. It just doesn't seem worth it, but it was a big worry for a while.

pcwildman

The entire game has been fought over F7.

SacrificeTheHorse

I believe you should sacrifice the horse.

pcwildman

My name means 'Lover of Horses' so I have to disagree. 😁 There should be a lamb around here somewhere.

pcwildman

I want to get good enough to challenge you, Sacrifice. What a name, and an impressive record. You might hear from me when I'm 70 years old. 😁 Or not.

Jasonosaurus

Sacrificing a piece on f7 is one of my favorite things. But you’ll need to get some more pieces out quickly to hit the exposed king, otherwise you’ll have trouble. 

ImDefNotAFurry
Knight for no castle is not worth it
1g1yy

The engine might say that you are close to equality even though you are down two points of material giving up a knight for a pawn. The fly in the ointment is that if you do not play accurately going forward, the two points of compensation will evaporate very quickly and you will find yourself -3. You have to play it on gut feel. If you think you can maintain the advantage then great. If you're not so sure, prepare for assimilation.

At lower levels it's probably not a big deal because plus or minus 2 is an everyday thing. When you get to Better opponents, they will spank you pretty hard for taking unwarranted risks.

pcwildman

More on Kaaaaaanighit sacrifice at F7- Horsies! I ran the moves into the pass and play analyzer and it came out that sacrificing your horse on F7 to mess up your opponents castling was the move to make, even without the Bishop backup. I still agree with you guys and I think it's a risky move.

Ian_Rastall
blueemu wrote:

Exposing the opponent's King is worthless if you've given up your developed pieces in order to expose them. What will you be attacking the King with?

After the King takes on f7 you put it in check with the Queen to f3. Their best move is to head toward the middle, at which point you put the other Knight on c3. It's not the worst situation to end up in, and it's very easy to remember.

1g1yy

I recalled this from an opening course but I didn't know what the variation was called. It's the French Reubenstein Fort Knox variation,  and 7 Nxf7 is actually a move. I don't know how often it gets played at the highest levels. But the engine seems to bounce around dead even or -0.2x. So it's certainly no worse than any other Gambit. At that point it shows black has only one move that maintains equality and the next best move is plus 2.6 so it needs played accurately.