Evans gambit is fun and all, but it's one of the few gambits i believe lower rated players shouldn't really play it aside from blitz that is. For most variants, you either have to be incredibly sharp to preciselly force and punish any mistake from the opponent in order to get something for the 2 pawns sacrificed, or against refuted variants, you'll have to be quite a good positional player to get the win after you get the pawn back.
The best advice i can give you about the opening is that it's all about controlling the centre and straight forward focus attack on f7, while trying to prevent castling with possible Ba3 or Bb2. Black best answers include d6, or maneuvre Ba5 -> Bb6, Be7 or Qe7 and d5, and little more, which kind of take the the initiative out of white .
On the positional side, there's also the possibility of a4+b4 for white which might pressure knight and bishop as well as control the queen side while focusing on attacking the king side.
Aside of all this, i actually use it for fun in blitz, and i must say that i don't really have much success with it often because if black nullifies the tempo you'll mostly just be a pawn down.
For about the last 4-6 months I have been playing 1.e4 with a focus on:
a) developing all my peices to active squares.
b) castling quickly
c) connecting the rooks
d)creating a threat on every move
e) limited pawn moves to maintain structure
Ok works well and I find myself in the Italian Game or a 2 knights game more than anything - probably my level - not alot of Sicilian players down here.
I was thinking that I want to have something a little fresh in my reprotore and the evans gambit seems to be a nice fit -
A) arrives from the same sequence of moves.
b) not a lot of therory
c) stays with cut and thrust ideas behind the open games.
How does the evans gambit fit into a young 1550 rated players open game reprotore - is it sound - and is there any good resources one could recommend - other than GM games (just to get the basic ideas, not a move order reference.
Thanks