How to Beat Gambit Players (4-Step Formula)

You missed your opponent’s move Bb4!, which leaves your position hopeless, and soon you lose the game. Instead of falling into a negative emotional state and hitting “rematch” at lightning speed (of course, this might not apply to you, but I’ve seen it happen to many players), try to accept the mistake. Instead of playing another five games to recover from the loss, let’s move on to step 3 - learning.

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3. LEARNING

Now we’ll start building our small chess database, which will help us learn how to play better and avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Go to the “More” tab and click “Library.”


Then click “Create New Collection” and give it a name, such as “vs Traps & Gambits” or something that feels intuitive to you.

Next, go to “Add Games” and click “Make Moves” - we’ve just added the first chapter to our database. Now we can save and analyze key positions that will help us avoid mistakes in the future!




Open your game and go to “Analysis,” as shown in the image below. This will allow us to carefully review key moves and understand how to play the opening more effectively. This way, we can avoid making the same mistakes in the future!



Now, turn on “Analysis,” which will bring up the evaluation bar, and then go to “Explore.” Here, we can see master games and learn how top players handled the same opening. This is a great way to study the best patterns of play!




In the position below, we can see that instead of defending the pawn with Bf4, playing Nc3 is slightly more popular. White's win rate after Nc3 is 62%, very close to Bf4. After playing Nc3, the evaluation bar still shows a significant advantage for White, so this could be a good idea.

After analyzing a few more moves, we reach the position shown in the image below. The most popular move is e4, which has a 62% win rate - a very solid result. However, we can also see that some moves below have led to a 100% win rate for White. This could be an interesting idea.

Qd4 has a 100% win rate (2 wins). Additionally, it continues piece development, making it look like a strong move. The last thing to check is the evaluation bar after playing Qd4. After playing Qd4, we still maintain an advantage, so I choose this move.

The last step is to go back to “Analysis,” remove the move e4 since we chose Qd4 in this position, and save our analysis by clicking “Save.” This way, our database stays organized and ready for future study.

Now that we’ve saved our analysis, it’s time for repetition. Regularly reviewing saved positions will help us remember key ideas and avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

A good method is simply playing games and paying attention whenever your opponent sets a trap or plays a gambit. After your chess session, go to your library, find your analyses, and compare them with what you actually played in the game. You can also take the opportunity to review other variations you've already built to reinforce your knowledge.

1. The first takeaway from this lesson is that sticking to one opening instead of playing many will save us a lot of effort and energy. This way, we’ll be less likely to fall into traps or end up in bad positions against gambits.

2. Trusting our calculations and positional evaluation is important. We won’t always make the right decision, but accepting mistakes and enjoying the learning process is key. That’s what will make us much better players.

3. It’s better to learn how to respond to traps and gambits after encountering them and avoid repeating the same mistakes rather than spending months studying every possible option and delaying actual play. Practice is key!

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LET'S MAKE FAST PROGRESS IN YOUR GAME!