Gained +400 rating this month and reached 1500 rapid using a gambit-only repertoire!

I started playing online chess(mostly 10+0 rapid) in October last year at the age of 29, played a 100 games or so starting at 750 elo and plateuing around 1000 elo. Then start of this year I was busy with work until the end of financial year so I did not get much time, until mid March arrived and I got more free time to focus so I committed to playing 100 games a month atleast from then on. I realized early on I was good at puzzles and I enjoyed the tactical aspect of the game, so I switched to playing more open lines and eventually found out that the best way to get the said open lines is to gambit material which also gives you an early lead in development. I started doing lessons here and also watching Youtube videos discussing these lines, most notably from Igor Smirnov(Remote Chess Academy), Daniel Naroditsky and Miodrag Perunovic, all of whom are GMs who follow the Soviet school of chess(tactical and aggressive lines), along with my idols Mikhail Tal and Garry Kasparov whose games I watched just to relax. All of them helped me immensely along with the engine to map out the best aggressive gambits against common openings. My strategy is to try and strangle my opponents by crushing them in development and playing as many forcing moves as possible, win a piece and play clean exchange chess to end the game if they don't get flagged. My repertoire is now as follows:

White(always 1.e4) 
Against 1.e5 Scotch, Goring, Danish or Evans
Against 1.c5 Smith-Morra or Wing 
Against 1.d5 Leonhardt or Kadas
Against 1.c6 or 1.e6 Panov-Botvinnik attack or Accelerated Panov attack(not gambits but played like one)

Black
Against 1.e4 Scandinavian, Icelandic or Portuguese
Against 1.d4 Benko, Englund or Hartlaub-Charlick
Against 1.c4 Jaenisch 

My aim is to reach 2000 elo just playing exciting, aggressive chess. Pretty sure it will take me more than a month this time haha, but I consider 1500-2000 as the top out for most casual players who can spare 1-2 hours everyday and I will be happy with whatever ceiling I reach. I have no interest in learning theory or main lines in the more solid openings its just way too much effort, as I frequently get demolished by closed positional players who are experts at manoeuvring. I also encounter a lot of players who straight up refuse to take gambits and end up in even worse positions, such is the fear of open lines sometimes haha. 

If you have any more solid and strong opening gambits to suggest, please do so I am always eager to try out new stuff. Thanks for reading and good luck in your chess journey, hope you are having as much fun as I am!

Congrats on the insane progress. Trust me, at 2000+ you can still catch people early in gambits. I don't have any recommendations but check out paul morphy's games. He was an amazing attacker, and he usually only played gambits like the evans or the kings gamibt for white.

Thanks guys, love the motivation. I took a look at a couple of Paul Morphy's games and damn he really might have been the first tactical chess wizard to exist back in the 1800s. It also seems Chess used to way more exciting and tactical before the invention of computers and deep theory lol, something I miss a lot when watching world championship games in modern times.

Congrats. Chess 960 would be interesting option to try if you don't want to learn openings

Chess960 leads to nothing. Have u seen how Gukesh, a strong player in normal chess, was kicked out of the German Freestyle tournament just after two rounds? And he's famous for beating the SGMs in normal chess. (No hate/offense against him, just pointing out facts).

Plus, u cant get titles if u play chess960. There is no substitute for normal OTB chess.

And you HAVE to learn theory, no way out...

I definitely find Chess 960 interesting but it seems its not very popular and its even harder to be matched to someone with your skill level online. Way easier to just have fun playing normal chess and making opponents(or myself) rage with unconventional plays lol.

You are my worst nightmare. Please stay away from me.

Nice! I liked this post. Congratz, it took me about 3 years to reach 1500, and then another 2 to get 1800, so your progress is very quick and we started at the same age

I will follow you wish you good luck!

Also, it looks like your openings are very nice, the Goring especially is a really powerful tool,

I need training games against that if you want hit me up, I lose to it quite alot ...

thanks i might try this!

Don't worry sir, I am also my own worst nightmare lol. I still blunder every other game because my tunnel vision is always the opponent's king and I end up with many backrank problems.

Thank you man, its great to know not everyone here is a child prodigy lol. The Goring is my favorite weapon against the Italian, and indeed its very powerful allowing you to swarm your opponent with all your pieces very early on. The way to beat it is playing extremely defensive and weathering the storm pretty much. Counter attacking is useless as white goes for an early short castle. If you survive the first 10-15 moves without exposing your king, Black is in a very good position to see out his pawn advantage.
Also absolutely, I would love to try out some lines against stronger players and see if the position remains advantageous for White. I dropped you a DM we can schedule a few games for sure, I live in Europe so I guess we are almost the same timezone.

you could try 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nf6 3 Nxe5 d6 4 Nxf7 against the Petroff.

Kxf7 and laugh

edit: ah no I analyzed that's actually nice

It's automatically lost, you just hide your king on g8 and you're good as black. You can probably get someone with it in bullet or with a very low rated player.

i haven’t lost with it yet, amazing isn’t it!

i am sure the OP would do much better with it than you analytical types haha

are you talking about otb?

It's more psychological, if you don't know the evaluation you think it's super dubious but actually it's 0.0... That's a factor...

so ?

i recommended it to the OP.

you can tell the OP it’s rubbish if you want.

it works well below 2100 rating, for me anyway.