A Novelty Or Not?
This week I played an interesting blitz game on the Black side of the Vienna. I played an early sacrifice in the style of the King's Gambit and won quickly.
After the game, I looked up the opening to see how similar this had been to previous games. The first novelty was 6.Bh3. The only preceding game to reach that same position featured the strange 6.Nh3. However, if you reverse the colors, the game not only has a predecessor, it has an exact replica played at the highest level!
The point of Black's opening here is that some of the most critical King's Gambit variations involve the move g7-g5 for Black. Since White has already played g3, the same critical lines transpose directly to the King's Gambit with colors reversed.
This left me wondering whether there was a novelty in this game at all. What do you think? Feel free to weigh in in the comments.
Just for fun, here's another predecessor in the same King's Gambit line. Note the year it was played.
Jeremy Kane is a National Master and three-time Wisconsin state champion. He is the Director of Training Content for Chess.com. He has been teaching chess in person and online for over 15 years and has designed hundreds of lessons, available on chess.com/lessons. He is the author of Starting Out The Trompowsky on Chessable and The Next To Last Mistake, a book on defensive ideas in chess.
He is the developer of the Caro-Kane Variation of the Caro-Kann Defense.
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