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The Englund Gambit is rapidly becoming one of my favourite gambits of all time! At the time of this video, I’ve played three or four games that have gone down the Englund Gambit Accepted line, and I’ve won all of them! And more than that, each of these games were short and fun, and I suspect, unexpected by my opponent playing (1. d4)!

This is well characterised by this short game where I managed to checkmate my opponent on move 9!

Firstly, the Englund Gambit Accepted (1. d4 e5 2. dxe5 Nc6) and White immediately plays a curious move where White’s advantage is immediately loss (3. f4) with Stockfish giving an evaluation of [0.00] despite White being up one pawn. I trade off my f-pawn for the e5 pawn and develop my king’s knight in the process (3… f6 4. exf6 Nxf6).

Then come some natural looking developing moves – for instance, my dark square bishop to its natural square (6… Bc5). It was on move 8 that I noticed a potential trap. My opponent had yet to move their e-pawn – they had started with the d-pawn and during normal development, there wasn’t a good place for it to go with my pawn on d5. Furthermore, my opponent had made a lot of pawn moves, but had not developed their pieces. The result was that the White king had only two squares to move to – f2 and d2 – both of which would be attacked by a provocative, but at the same time, seemingly feckless advance of my knight (8… Ne4) as it wasn’t directly threatening any pieces.

My opponent misses the trap and counterattacks my knight with their knight (9. Nfd2), blundering a checkmate in 1. Bishop to f2 (9… Bf2). GG!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/55908884313

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2022.09.03"]
[Round "-"]
[White "Gilles1948"]
[Black "vitualis"]
[Result "0-1"]
[Timezone "UTC"]
[ECO "A40"]
[ECOUrl "https://www.chess.com/openings/Englund-Gambit-2.dxe5-Nc6"]
[UTCDate "2022.09.03"]
[UTCTime "01:55:42"]
[WhiteElo "1307"]
[BlackElo "1380"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[Termination "vitualis won by checkmate"]
[StartTime "01:55:42"]
[EndDate "2022.09.03"]
[EndTime "01:59:46"]
[Link "https://www.chess.com/game/live/55908884313"]

1. d4 e5 2. dxe5 {Englund Gambit Accepted} 2... Nc6 3. f4 $6 {An inaccuracy [0.00] that potentially weakens the squares behind the pawns} 3... f6 4. exf6 Nxf6 5. Nf3 d5 6. c3 Bc5 7. b4 Bb6 8. g3 Ne4 {[%c_highlight
f2;keyPressed;none;opacity;0.8;square;f2;persistent;false,d2;keyPressed;none;opacity;0.8;square;d2;persistent;false][%c_arrow
b6f2;keyPressed;none;from;b6;opacity;0.8;to;f2;persistent;false,f2e1;keyPressed;none;from;f2;opacity;0.8;to;e1;persistent;false]
A mate in one trap has been set} 9. Nfd2 $4 {My opponent misses the tactic and blunders [-M1]} 9... Bf2# {[%c_effect
e8;square;e8;type;Winner,e1;square;e1;type;CheckmateWhite]} 0-1