Handling Vienna Opening Responses.

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PMFarrell90

A little background here - I was interested in exploring the Vienna game & adding this opening to my repertoire. I tend to learn better by doing. Courses have helped me so far with some e4 and Caro Kann lines, but I tend to be more engaged with learning when I am leading the inquiry. I figured I would create for myself a set of sample lines with notes and exercises to keep track of what I have learned. Since the only way to do that here is to make it public (as far as I know), you get to follow along with the lines I investigate and use the exercises I've created for my own training. I will continue to add to this as I explore the opening.

My first exercise will be a puzzle finding the top line of the Vienna Gambit after 4. ...Bc4. In the master games database this is the most common response to the Vienna Gambit, and losing more often than winning. However, the engine evaluation gives a 1.4 advantage to white and wins 53.4% of games on Lichess in blitz and rapid games.

After this line, let's look at the top move, Ke7:
Here's a look at the more popular Rf8:
PMFarrell90

Vienna Gambit - Knight back to starting square, attacking the advanced pawn.

Develop your knight. When they attack the d pawn, move the e pawn forward to defend. When they take, pin the pawn with the queen. Take advantage of the pin. I included an interesting variation where they try to win a pawn with the queen, but it leads to trouble for black.

PMFarrell90

Vienna Game - Copycat variation (Max Lange, Meitner-Mieses Gambit [Qg4 Qf6) Breaking the symmetry by attacking g7 with the queen. Queen comes out to defend. Even though the king can be attacked on f2, induce it with a knight move. I've included an interesting resource for black in this position. This is not clearly winning, but we will emerge with an advantage.