A beautiful game of the Jaenisch Gambit (vs Ruy Lopez)
#RuyLopez #JaenischGambit
This gambit is named after Carl Ferdinand von Jaenisch, a Finnish chess player from the 19th century who helped develop the theory around this opening, among others. This is now my go to response to the Ruy Lopez Opening and today, I finally had a game of the Jaenisch Gambit where it went really well! Previously, my Jaenisch Gambit games have been a little messy as I couldn’t quite remember the opening lines or the overall strategy. This was a beautiful game that was “almost perfect”- an accuracy of 96% according to the chess.com engine!
In this game, my opponent (shoutout @ReubenJFraser) declined the Jaenisch Gambit with d3 (4. d3), which is one of the best responses for White. Remembering my theory, the best response here is to exchange pawns, which opens up the f-file (4… fxe4).
From this point onwards, there are some striking similarities between the Jaenisch Gambit for Black and the Vienna Gambit (Falkbeer) with White. One of the strategic themes is to take advantage of the semi-open f-file by developing the king-side pieces, and then castling that side. This places the rook in a commanding position controlling the f-file. Then, place more pressure down that file, especially against the weak f2 pawn. The dark squared bishop, the knight on g6, and the queen are all potentially well placed to make an attack.
My opponent played well but was perhaps a little unfamiliar with the Jaenisch Gambit. He was another Australian player, and we discussed the game using the chat function on chess.com after the match. He lost some tempo moving his rook out of the defence of the f2 pawn, and then having to move it back as the formation and intent of my attack became clear. Things get a bit tricky when there are multiple pieces attacking the king’s position and my opponent made a critical error capturing one of my pieces with their g-pawn, opening their king’s defences. They resigned two moves later with an impending mate in 1. GG!
Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/52448980527
