With E4 the main gambits you worry about are the Latvian countergambit, four knight game Italian variation knight sacrifice, whatever c4 is, Sicilian defense knight sacrifice, and if somehow white blunders the damiano defense that is technically a gambit.
The Englund gambit counter finnally
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Mar 26, 2025
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#23
With what play abectous there are gambit lots in fact but the main 3 are because you play the ret'i there the stupidest gambit of all the Grob Gambit, Whatever E4 is, and the four knights game Italian variation knight sacrifice. so every opening for white has a gambit inless you push a pawn 1 square forward only inless there fianchetos there are no main gambits inless the opening changes to the potato gambit or you play the ware or I forgot what a4 is because they cant give a free pawn since that pawn would be pinned so about 10/22 of the openings in chess have.
I’ve always played Englund, even in classical time control games. However, I never played the Qe7 variation in serious 2-hour games because I know it’s terrible if White knows how to handle it, haha.
Instead, I played Nge7 (Zilbermints Variation) and surprised my opponents.
Nowadays, I only play the Hartlaub-Charlick gambit line, which involves playing d6. I think it's the most practical option and leads to interesting positions.
There are two classic refutations. One is not to capture the pawn directly and play Bg5, but paradoxically, I have very good results with this line as Black.
The other refutation is quite simple and not many know it. It involves playing Nc3, quickly followed by Nb5! to capture the bishop on d6.
However, I’ve deeply studied this position, which at first glance seems quite bad for Black, and it seems quite playable if Black memorizes a couple of lines, haha.
The main gambits played up against d4 are the Austrian variation, Krause variation, old benoni, and also the englund gambit don't forget to mention the albin gambit. There I used capital letters, punctuations, and commas. Are you happy?