I have a confession to make.
I created the bulk of my site, https://www.ianchessgambits.com/, at a time when I wasn't in full time employment and had plenty of time to devote to thoroughly analysing a wide range of gambits. In recent years I've been in full time employment and have inevitably had rather less time, and over time it has become rather too daunting for me. This has resulted in a large number of pages falling into disarray as procrastination set in, my previous site got discontinued, support for Flash disappeared and some of the ChessBase-based replayable diagrams have stopped working properly.
I haven't been blogging much or updating the site much recently partly because the whole thing has got too much for me to handle and has kept putting me off.
Had I been older and wiser when I first started the site, I would probably have gone for a more selective, article based approach, possibly more along the lines of what Tim Harding used to do in his excellent ChessCafe.com column, writing about lines that particularly interest me and branching out over time to eventually end up with a pretty comprehensive site. But then again, some of the tools that are currently available for this sort of thing weren't available back then. I'm attracted to the idea of doing studies on Lichess.org and creating articles that essentially embed said studies into the articles. When I first started out, the best PGN viewers were rather more primitive.
I wouldn't want to get rid of what I already have on the site, though. I'm considering keeping it up as a sort of archive and then reverting to this more article-based approach, but I'm open to other suggestions. It's not ideal, but I need to change something or I'll just keep on saying that I'm going to push forward with updates and then releasing one or two updates per year if I'm lucky.
In the meantime I've been discovering some famous chess streamers - I chanced upon Eric "Oh no my queen!" Rosen and then branched out from him to Levy Rozman ("GothamChess") and Alexandra Botez (who coined the concept of the "Botez gambit", where you blunder your queen and then do your best to pretend that it was a sacrifice).
This well-known position arose from 1.e4 e5 2.d4 exd4 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.Bc4 Nf6 5.0-0 Nxe4 6.Re1 d5 7.Bxd5 Qxd5 8.Nc3. My opponent played 8...Be6??, allowing 9.Nxd5, but somehow I lost because I let Black's d4-pawn run forward and queen. I played that game a long time ago so can't remember the specifics, but it was one of my most embarrassing losses (though in my defence it was just an online blitz game). 8...Be6?? is the move that most springs to my mind when I think of the Botez gambit. Anyway, I'm pleased to see these people streaming and stressing the importance of playing chess primarily for fun.
Eric Rosen has been having a lot of fun with the Stafford Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 Nc6?! 4.Nxc6 dxc6) in online blitz games.
When I first looked at it, I rejected it out of hand, seeing it as basically a tempo-down version of the Boden-Kieseritzky Gambit (which, although dangerous, is not fully sound), but when I looked closely, it's one of those lines that Tim McGrew might refer to as having a high "Caltrop Coefficient" - with best play Black ends up a pawn down for just vague hacking chances, but whereas a slip by Black tends to result in being a pawn down for nothing (which isn't such a big deal at fast time controls, especially online), a slip by White can often lead to instant ruin. But it's quite telling that in Eric Rosen's recent over-the-board games in Vegas he passed up opportunities to play the Stafford Gambit, preferring the just mildly offbeat 2...Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 Bb4+ 5.c3 Bc5. It's one of those lines that can be a lot of fun in online blitz and lead to good attacks, but in slow over the board games risks producing a number of depressing losses and draws where you never really had much for the pawn.
Interestingly one of his other pet lines is the London System (1.d4 and 2.Bf4) which, in contrast, has a reputation of being very solid and very sound, though it can certainly be played in an aggressive way, e.g. involving queenside castling and, if Black goes kingside, throwing forward the kingside pawns. I guess he doesn't pre-move 2.Bf4, as otherwise the Englund Gambit (1...e5) would become very attractive.
