A nice exchange sac in the Albin Counter-Gambit

I had a nice win (albeit in a simultaneous) with an exchange sac in the Albin.  This game is a good example of how White can go wrong despite playing a succession of "natural" moves.  Of course, White can do better.  5.a3 is the most popular response in my experience, but the move-order trick 5.Nbd2 may be more accurate as it takes the sting out of 5...Nge7 and 5...Bf5.  After 5.a3, I opted to put the bishop on f5.  I think it was 7.Qa4 where White started to go a bit astray; 5.a3 is nonetheless a very reasonable try for advantage and 7.Nb3 or the immediate 7.b4 would have maintained good chances of an advantage out of the opening.

"Real life" has been slowing progress down on my gambiteering site in recent months, but I'm still preparing new content for it.

The trick is that Black follows up with ...Nb2+ and picks up the queen on a4; the exchange sacrifice was to kill White's coverage of the important b2-square.  Were it not for this sneaky tactic, White may have been able to get away with Bb2xd4.

I note that I missed quite a deep "computer move" in this game: 11...Nd7!, intending 12...Nc5 with the idea of 13...Nd3+.

A win as Black in the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit

The next lot of openings articles will focus on anti-French gambits and another revisit of the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit.  It may take a couple of weeks though as I have a lot of other stuff going on.

I had a recent game as Black where I unexpectedly faced the BDG.  I managed to win the game with the extra pawn, but as usual at club level, there were some mutual errors along the way.  I tried out the von Popiel Attack with 1.d4 d5 2.e4 dxe4 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 about 10-11 years ago, but soon replaced 4.Bg5 with the standard 4.f3.  White does get some compensation for the pawn but less chances of a quick attack developing in my opinion.  Indeed, early in the game, I was the first to go on the attack.