From: mad4@ellis.uchicago.edu (Bill Maddex)
Subject: Re: king's gambit
Reply-To: mad4@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: Pranksters for Peace
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 21:24:20 GMT

The KG is a great opening.  Top players generally don't like the risk it
entails, but that doesn't mean it's refuted or anything.  Eric is sort of
right when he suggests that it doesn't give enough edge to beat top GMs:
Yasser probably wouldn't want to hear that, having lost to Spassky's KG at
the Candidates' in '86, or Nunn, who lost to Illescas in the '86 Olympiad,
or Psakhis and Benjamin, who've lost to Hebden in it, but it is true that
by forcing the issue so early White gives up some of the potentially 
favorable tension that a lot of Spanish lines promise.  On the other hand 
he also avoids the eighty bazillion pages of book those lines lead to.
I think the GM attitude is some milder version of Nunn's claim that "all 
sharp lines are drawn."

Eric is also a little right in saying that the KG is more positional these
days, in that you don't see so many blood soaked board as squeezed endings,
but in several lines, including the Fischer defense, the Kieseritzky and the
'modern' 3...d5 current practice favors bloodier, less ending oriented lines
than were regarded as correct twenty years ago.  Hebden, Gallagher and the
Polgar sisters all have something to do with this trend.

Two good articles on the KG appear in NIC a few years ago.  I don't have time
to type in much of the stuff, but in the first, Gallagher's notes to his
pretty crush of Sheila Jackson at the British Championship in '88, he says:

	"A commonly held misconception about the [KG] is that it is very
	dangerous if B tries to hang on to his extra materia, but that if
	he returns the pawn or even declines the gambit, the path to 
	equality will be fairly easy."

And gives one example each of B quickly getting into trouble in the Falkbeer,
3...d5 and Declined, respectively.  Later on in the article he also gives 
his wild loss to Suart Conquest from that tournament:  
 
	1 e4 e5 2 f4 ef 3 Nf3 d6 4 d4 g5 5 h4 g4 6 Ng1 f3!? 7 gf(?) Be7 8 Be3 
	Bxh4+ 9 Kd2 c5! (TN previously this position had been regarded as
	good for W) 10 Kc1!? cd 11 Qxd4 Bf6 12 Qd2 Nc6 13 Nc3 Be6 14 Nd5 
	Bxd5 15 ed Ne5 16 f4 Nd7 17 Rh5!? Ne7 18 Be2 (Bg2 may be better)
	g3 19 a4 a6 20 Ra3 Rc8 21 Bd4 Rg8 22 Rxh7 Nf5 23 Bh5 Bxd4 24 Rxf7
	Qb6! 25 Rg7+ Kd8 26 Rxg8+ Ke7! 27 Qe2 Ne5! 28 Rxc8 Bxb2+ 29 Kd2
	Qg1 30 fe Bc1+ 31 Kc3 Qd4+ 32 Kb3 Qb2+ 33 Kc4 b5+ 34 ab ab+ 35 Kd3 
	Qd4++

Pretty neat, huh?  Spanish games may be deeper and richer, but are they really
more fun?  For those of you who want to look this up, it's NIC mag 7, '88.

The other article is by GM Mikhalchishin in NIC 8, '89.  I don't have time
to key in any of his analysis, but it's a good article, and I'll leave you
w/his conclusion:
	
	"My comments may prove too optimistic for W and too pessimistic
	for B.  But I saw difficulties which first class players like
	Geller, Psakhis and Romanshin experienced playing with Black against
	Hebden in the Moscow [86] tournament.  I would not be surprised
	at all when the 'deadly sick' rarity from the nineteenth century
	gains its deserved place in the chess theory again.