King's Gambit - Common Lines, Tricks & Traps

The King's Gambit is such an old goodie by the books of many history's greatest! It's certainly a surprising opening that black will have to face every now and then, and it can result in some imbalance play along with all of the tactical lines that lie within this truly different opening! Against lower rated opponents, you can completely wipe the board with them and go past a lot of people, dominating all of your games with your superior position knowledge of this extraordinary opening. White goes for dynamic play, and tries to minimize the punishing equalization black will throw at him, by setting up tactical traps and leads that ultimately end up with black in a heap.

Every King's Gambit line starts with the moves e4 played by white, gaining central control and opening up your light squared bishop and queen's diagonals, as well as setting up future positional plans. Black responds with e5, a very common move played at all levels, and especially scholastically. From here white plays the insane pawn gambit f4! This looks like quite an accuracy, exposing the king, weakening oneself's position and completely giving your kingside pawn away, but this specific move is what leads to all the haymakers both sides will throw at each other all throughout the opening of this dynamic game. When black accepts this pawn and steps into the King's Gambit accepted, he/she will have to watch each move they make, ensuring there will be no sort of backlash upon their situation on the board - as white can start playing with extreme aggression and try to take over the board position. The main positional plans white will start to play includes taking more space and expanding center control via d4, taking the full center with pawns, and opening up the dark squared bishops diagonal to regain the lost pawn, with complete central domination. Before white can do this though, you have to be able to defend against the weak diagonal created by gambiting the pawn - or else white can be in for some serious trouble. Players usually do this by playing moves like Nf3, as this pawn isn't going anywhere, and Qh4 must be prevented at all costs - unless you really are taking the risk for the biscuit. These lines will all be covered in the diagram below, along with the defenses and traps both sides will be going through in whatever games you play using this hostile opening.

With these King's Gambit lines, white will be very likely to go on for a full belligerent attack while being as confrontational as possible. If black manages to get out of all little threats that white keeps throwing at them, the position will result in a very interesting middlegame, where both sides have to fight till the end with whatever situation they are currently in. Against alphazero or stockfish, white will almost certainly lose playing these King's Gambit Accepted lines, with these engines relentlessly punishing you for every move you make - but against intermediate players who all are stuck in the same rat race to try to get on top of each other, you have chances to succeed. Ways to decline the gambit for black include the calm Classical Defense, or the crazy looking and dynamic Falkbeer Countergambit, where both sides are ready to snatch the victory in any dirty way possible. Players usually don't have this kind of prep against such a surprising, and very old opening in general, and this can give you a massive advantage. This gambit is a very sharp, forcing and aggressive opening, where if the unsuspecting black doesn't know what their doing, they could go down in a brutal checkmate resulting in a smashing early attack given by white.

You can definitely get some really fun games as white, and as black by reversing the effect back onto white via all of the trappy and tricky lines both sides could be well versed in. It's a very old opening indeed, similar to the Queen's Gambit, and was employed by many great attacking romantic players in the past, as well as the early 20th century. Kingside + Central attacks are very common in all lines of the King's Gambit, be it positional, tactical or just completely and utterly nonsensical. Plenty of game winning ideas that you will be able to learn from both sides, and I do hope that you indeed do learn some valuable opening lessons from the understanding of the King's Gambit! 

Today I'll provide you just a few traps and lines you could be looking at in your games, without too much explanation or detailed clarification. That's what you should be doing after you get out of this blog post. I'm solely trying to get you guys an interest in different types of openings, so that you can put in the diligent training and engine prep to get ahead in your games. In my future opening posts, I'll be doing the same thing, trying for you to obtain an opening mindset, rather than explaining a bunch of lines in this post, I want you to get out there and fight for an advantage with the use of your own training. So without further ado, here are some common lines and traps to get you into the King's Gambit! Enjoy!