Budapest Gambit
The Budapest Gambit (or Budapest Defense) is a tricky opening Black can play against White's 1.d4. Though not the most common opening choice among masters, the Budapest is a sound gambit. An offbeat opening, it's regularly employed at the club level and can be a good surprise weapon for Black.
Starting Position Of The Budapest Gambit
The Budapest Gambit starts with the moves 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5. Black plays a counterintuitive move, offering a seemingly free pawn and letting White attack their knight.
Black's idea is to disrupt White's central control. Black will eventually win the pawn back, get a strong attack, or force White to make positional concessions.
Pros
- It can be a tricky weapon to employ as Black
- It's not as usual as other openings, so White might be underprepared
- It's one of Black's best-scoring lines among club-level players
Cons
- Black has to waste time getting the pawn back
- White generally emerges with at least some space advantage
- White can also often get the bishop pair, which is usually an advantage
Main Variations Of The Budapest Gambit
The Budapest Gambit is not popular at the elite level, so it features fewer variations than other mainstream openings. Below, you can learn more about its most popular lines:
Rubinstein Variation
The Rubinstein Variation is the most popular and starts with the moves 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.dxe5 Ng4 4.Bf4. Black attacks the e5-pawn, and White defends it by developing the bishop. Black keeps attacking the pawn, and White usually returns the material for a lead in development. White can also keep the pawn at the cost of a worse pawn structure.
Adler Variation
The Adler Variation begins after 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.dxe5 Ng4 4.Nf3. White protects the pawn by developing the knight and intends to use their extra space to their advantage. Black can attack White's kingside with an odd-looking rook lift.
Alekhine Variation
The Alekhine Variation occurs with the moves 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.dxe5 Ng4 4.e4. White offers the pawn back immediately to reinforce their control of the d5-square and build a strong pawn center. Black usually recaptures the e5-pawn, and White follows up with 5.f4, gaining even more central space.
Fajarowicz Variation
The Fajarowicz Variation is the least popular line of the Budapest and starts with the moves 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.dxe5 Ne4. Black goes for active piece play and fast development instead of trying to recover the pawn. With this move, Black disrupts White's natural development scheme, making a good square for the b1-knight especially hard for White to find. This line has many traps, and Black can win quick games if White doesn't know what to do.
History Of The Budapest Gambit
The earliest record of the Budapest Gambit is from 1896, when GM Geza Maroczy played the opening to defeat Adler in Budapest. The opening then gained popularity when GM Milan Vidmar used it to defeat GM Akiba Rubinstein, one of the best players in the world at the time.
After this, other top players like GM Savielly Tartakower and Siegbert Tarrasch started to play the Budapest. In 1918, Carl Schlechter published a monograph on the opening, further helping to popularize it.
Rubinstein later stated that his namesake variation gave White a positional advantage—an assessment current chess engines agree with. The Budapest Gambit then started losing some of its popularity, and to this day, it is not common among the chess elite.