The Ruy Lopez Opening, or the Spanish Game, is one of the oldest and most effective openings as White in chess. Traditionally, I’ve responded as Black with the Berlin Defense, basically, developing my other knight – Nf6. However, I didn’t have a great result, losing 54% of games (I’d played the Berlin Defense 28 times at the time of this video).

I have recently discovered the Jaenisch Gambit, also known as the Schliemann Defense, which is the aggressive f5 immediately against the Ruy Lopez. Interestingly when we look at this on the Lichess database limited to lower-rated blitz and rapid games, the Jaenisch Gambit is the only move where Black has an advantage over White (winning 52% vs 45%). Even better, it is very rarely seen by the Ruy Lopez player – it’s the tenth most common move and was seen in less than 1% of games!

I’m still exploring the ideas of the Jaenisch Gambit – meaning – I’ve lost most of the games I’ve played using it so far! However, as a Vienna Gambit lover, I really like the Jaenisch as it’s reminiscent of a reverse version of the Vienna Gambit, and thus, with similar ideas.

This game was in the Team Australia Platinum Celebration for under 1300s tournament. I had lost the first game against this opponent, who played an almost perfect game of the Vienna Game Main Line as Black! In this second game, they opened with the Ruy Lopez, one of the openings I don’t do well against. So, I thought, “why not?”, and responded with the Jaenisch Gambit.

I absolutely didn’t play the most accurately, and most opponent had the opportunity to severely punish a mistake as we entered the middle game. However, they missed this, and this allowed for one of the strategic ideas of the Jaenisch to take hold. The f-pawn trades itself off, which opens up the f-file for black. After castling kingside, the rook now has a semi-open file to exert its influence immediately. The lends itself very well to piling on the pressure on the relatively weak white f-pawn on f2.

In this game, this was a very tricky position. Indeed, according to Stockfish, my opponent and I had together, 7 consecutive mistakes or blunders! The evaluation curves bounce back and forth like ping pong here! The interesting thing here is that every move that both my opponent and I made has a “reasonable” logic behind it! Luckily for me, the final bad move was made by my opponent rather than myself, which then allowed a capture cascade that resulted in me up a full piece in an endgame.

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/daily/411139395

[Event "TA Platinum celebration for under 1300s - Round 1"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2022.06.24"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Saliba25"]
[Black "vitualis"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "C63"]
[WhiteElo "826"]
[BlackElo "1168"]
[TimeControl "1/259200"]
[EndDate "2022.06.25"]
[Termination "vitualis won by resignation"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 f5 4. d3 fxe4 5. dxe4 Nf6 6. Nc3 Bb4 7. O-O a6 8. Bxc6 bxc6 9. Nxe5 Bxc3 10. bxc3 O-O 11. g4 Nxe4 12. Bb2 Qh4 13. Qe2 d5 14. Nf3 Qxg4+ 15. Kh1 Rxf3 16. c4 Nxf2+ 17. Rxf2 Rxf2 18. Qxg4 Bxg4 19. Re1 Re2 20. Rxe2 Bxe2 0-1