French Winawer, Maroczy Gambit

Here is a perhaps little known gambit I've recently been trying to spice up the French Defence.  In the French Winawer, Maroczy Gambit, white offers up a pawn on the fourth move.  Most black players now decline the gambit, but in this game against the world champion Alexander Alekhine, Aron Nimzowitsch accepts, grabbing a second pawn for good measure, but leaves his king too exposed, and in the end, has to give up his queen.  Alekhine was a big fan of this gambit, later using it to beat Euwe in their 1935 title match.  Lasker also used it to beat Capablanca.  In 1978, Bronstein used it to beat former World Champion Tigran Petrosian.  Even today, grandmasters like Teimour Radjabov, Ian Rogers and Jean Marc Degraeve offer up this gambit upon occasion.

This is normally refered to as the Alekhine variation, relatively common at the club level.  If you play the French you should expect to see it.

At move 4 for white in the french winawer there are several good choices besides the usual 4 e5 which is the most often played according to my database. They are 4 Ne2 ,  4 exd5, 4 Bd3 and 4 Qd3 and all of them do ok for white with the latter 2 doing even better than the customary 4 e5. The winawer player must be prepared to meet them all or else he can quickly find himself in trouble.

I don't normally play the French defence as black.  Mainly I've just been looking around for gambit ideas to play against it.  I play the Alekhine-Chatard gambit from time to time: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.e5 Nfd7 6.a4, and someone else was suggesting the Reti Gambit 1.e4 e6 2.b3 d5 3.Bb2.  I haven't tried it yet, but the Wing Gambit looks a bit wooly: 2.Nf3 d5 3.e5 c5 4.b4.

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 Another interesting gambit against the french is the alapin gambit : 1 e4 e6  2 d4 d5  3 Be3 dxe4 4 Nd2

I have been playing the 2. Nf3 Wing gambit for about 30 years--probably not 100% sound as I have lost to some 2400 Correspondence players but it is lots of fun and does work well much of the time.

Best book coverage may be by Tim Harding through NIC had a survey ( I think YB 50) on it

Most people now try and decline it with an early ...d4

Thanks for the suggestion, Reb, and the references on the Wing, aansel.  I found another gambit too: the Milner-Barry Gambit 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6 6.Bd3 cd 7.cd Bd7 8.0-0 Nxd4 9.Nxd4 Qxd4 10.Nc3.  Pretty long wind up.

Milner-Barry has been around and studied for years--quite complicated. A while back it was very big in cc play