3 Times Paul Morphy Won with the Evans Gambit in 17 Moves or Less!

hey everybody this is jonathan schruntz and for a long time now you guys have been requesting videos on the evans gambit this seems to be one that you guys are really interested in so i'm happy to finally sit down and make a video about it and this is such a crazy interesting opening i feel like different openings need to be studied in different ways something like the evans gambit where white here is giving up a b-pawn in order to try to get an initiative to try to start something in the center and to develop a lot faster while black still needs to figure out exactly how to castle i feel like one of the important ways to do this is to actually see the initiative in action so before we ever make a video we could always make a video later on the actual theory of the evans gambit so let me know in the comments below if that's something that you actually would be interested in because i'd be happy to do that as well but i feel like specifically for these openings where it's all about the initiative and it's all about how to open up files and open up diagonals for bishops as fast as you possibly can to generate an attack what's really important to do is to actually see that in action to see how you can punish mistakes by the opponents and to just kind of get a feel for the gambit so i want to do that today by looking at somebody who has an absolutely incredible record with the evans gambits paul morphy the american hero of chess here he uh he did so many games he has something in the database i was looking through about 50 games of him playing the evans gambit and it's just brutal stuff it's just win after win after win after win he just gets the initiative every single game opens up the files and just checkmates everybody the same exact way so it's 100 worth taking a look at some of his games so we're gonna go over three times that he crushed people in 17 moves or less with the evans gambit it's really fantastic stuff so for those that don't know in the italian game if they bring out that bishop to c5 right here boom you can hit him with the move pawn to b4 and the idea of course is that after they take we're going to play c3 the bishop is going to need to move and then we can play d4 wyken castle and just try to get the pieces out as fast as possible now uh the main theoretical moves is actually bishop to a5 and the second most common is bishop to c5 and most of these games that we're gonna look at today bishop to c5 was the choice this seems to be like the most logical and you know you're just sticking on this diagonal but it does have the one downside that when white ever plays d4 and most players actually will play d4 in this position this was not morphe's choice but most people actually do this and then decide to castle here and you can sacrifice you know another pawn durham to take on c3 which most players will not be willing to do but uh that's why some people would prefer to go to a5 however on a5 there's also the issue that then at some point you're probably going to need to go back to b6 with the bishop anyway so they're very similar in nature but now morphe decides to just castle and after d6 plays the move pawn to d4 after one more capture he takes back and it's clear to see white is definitely a pawn down but he does have the opportunity black is still a couple turns away and the question is how can white make the most of this how can we get some sort of initiative or some sort of attack going while we have the opportunity well morphy just follows a very simple principle of developing the stuff and using this lead in development and here already black begins to go wrong black plays what i think would be just the you know first move if you've never seen this position the most obvious move in the world knight to f6 but this actually already lands black in a little bit of trouble as we will soon see a more common response is to actually do something like knight to a5 which is a very common idea in this position and after the bishop goes back you can put this knight on e7 is kind of a more typical idea and the point is you're not running into e5 and maybe you'll even get to play the move pawn to d5 yourself so this could have been sort of a more natural way if you actually know a little bit about uh modern theory in the evans gambit however knight to f6 exactly how are we going to punish it black is one move away from castling now's the time to strike so murphy hits him with the move pawn to e5 opening diagonals is going to be huge for us and here i think black actually makes the right decision of taking on e5 although before we actually get into this game uh i do want to show you there was also another game it didn't make the list because it was just a little bit too long but he also played a game against uh de rivieri i believe um was the opponent and i'll show you as much as i can remember of that game but it was just another good idea just another indication of how exactly you can play these things what you want to do generally in these positions as you want to open it up so this isn't the game against hampton anymore this is a totally different game that he played but here yeah he was able to open up even more and you can see position like this he's starting to get a major initiative and i think white may already be actually winning here after d5 and went queen to f6 and here is where he got really out of control and really amazing uh queen to f6 don't worry about that knight boom bishop to g5 that's what he played he just sacked this knight to open this up and it really does look very very dangerous for the black king i believe the game went queen to d3 after some captures here he played yet another amazing move he sacrificed a lot so this game could have made the cut but it was just a little bit too long it was over 20 moves boom rook to e7 with the big idea that now there's going to be this fork in the position so the king decided to run over here the queen decided to just stay on the board and uh what exactly happened here it went rook to d1 always trying to gain time whenever you have the option of gaining time and now this knight comes in the knight is actually a very good defender so boop removing the defender black took back here and now we can see after queen to b1 there's just way too big of an attack on this king that's way too many pieces over there the king has no chance and in fact i believe the game went queen to f5 he did capture this and then he like ran away and had a g4 something like this and uh white was able to win this game but that's just kind of a nice indication of exactly what can happen in uh in a position like this so if this is too slow the idea if we ever get to open up this position something really good should happen for white so back to our game here this is a game against hampton in the game uh d-takes e5 is what was played on the board and now uh do try to figure out exactly what you would play here he plays an amazing move an absolutely absolutely amazing move here so uh dude do take the time if you want to try to figure out what white played here and it's a very typical well-known idea in the evans gambit whenever this d-pawn moves one of the things that should be on our radar is this amazing move bishop to a3 so not worried about material not worried about anything opening up in the center if the center opens up in any way that is going to be absolutely fantastic for us uh and yeah he's just so just gambling the whole center away and getting out and now this bishop is an absolute monster it's not going to be very easy for black to ever get castle now or shut down this diagonal whatsoever and if the end files are opening up it's going to be game over for black and in the game black played bishop to g4 this isn't the best move but i do actually want to take morphe off the screen here for for just a second so we can give you a little insight there was this one really nice computer move um let's see if we can recreate it so the computer suggests that this is already over after the the bishop takes here it goes queen to b3 uh queen d7 uh there's just this one line that i i can't resist but showing you guys knight a5 seems like a totally reasonable idea in general but now what about knight takes e5 this remarkable idea where after you take the queen not taking back right away but instead boop knight takes f7 and look the king has absolutely nowhere to go the minor pieces here are just controlling all of the squares so well and this is going to result in some sort of a material loss here for black i couldn't help but point that out i thought that was that was a pretty cute and amazing line there but it just goes to show just how powerful excuse me just how powerful this initiative can really get so uh heading back one more time it's it's basically game over but bishop to g4 is what was played in the game now came queen to b3 very natural we'll see another one of the ideas so part of black's point was that now he's going to be playing bishop to h5 to defend the f7 pawn but open it up just open the position every chance that you get and also keep in mind that whenever you can develop a piece with tempo just bring it in rook to d1 attack that queen make her go to kind of a weird square and now white sorry black will never be able to castle this way you're never going to be able to go that way as long as we have our rook on the d file so it is looking grim so what do you do you open up the position pawn to e6 black cannot afford to let it open up so now he plays f6 and from here there's only a couple more moves left in this game uh you find just a really really nice way to continue how do you increase the advantage how do you increase the attack how do you put even more pressure on black well he found a really really really nice way and this is very impressive even from this position it looks very promising but how exactly do you do it queen to b5 not only attacking this bishop from a long ways away but now setting up for the winning move which is just the very strong bishop to d5 and here black just had to resign because the threat of bishop takes c6 is just so absolutely crushing and have a look around there's really nothing black can do about it just bishop take c6 is coming next and it's going to be lights out for black so i thought that was a was a really cool fantastic game um so yeah just keep that in mind open it up develop with tempo and destroy your opponents and we move on to game number two this is the game paul morphy versus alonso morphy uh this is actually his father i can really quick show you this i don't think you guys can actually see the the full page or anything but uh alonzo morphe he was the attorney general in louisiana and uh it was uh his home was an atmosphere of genteel civility and culture where chess and music were typical highlights of a sunday home gathering his son paul morphy was super good at this game that we call chess so that's just a little back story this is some morphe on morphe action here and once again we see the evans gambit and after c3 bishop to c5 was also the choice in this game d4 we get a very very similar position now most players with the white pieces here in this exact uh position after this recapture will castle right away and the reason is now black actually does have this additional option of bishop to b4 check which wasn't played in the game but bishop to b4 check might mean that either white will play like king f1 or something but if you have to block with a piece trading pieces will be pretty decent for black but okay bishop goes back to b6 and now castles now we see this move uh knight to a5 and yeah this is probably okay but maybe can get away with this but the way black followed it up doesn't really work out so the bishop just goes back and now black tries to sneak in this move pawn to d5 and these are all kind of typical ideas but probably black would have been better advised to develop a piece and probably then i should go to e7 not to f6 because again on f6 it might get hit with e5 at some point but pawn to d5 and i ask you here i'm not on twitch right now so i don't have a chat i can't really ask you but i do ask you anyway how would you handle this what would you do here if you were white you can pause you can talk to me in the comments but that's not really going to do any good uh what would you do here let me let me know somehow some way open it up so here he finds a really strong continuation just opening up the position and after the queen took back again we want to have a look around there's a lot of very tempting moves i think uh i mean rookie one looks very tempting knight to c3 looks very tempting but he just went for this simple idea yet again whenever that d-pawn is out of the way of just playing bishop to a3 and just saying how are you ever going to castle and we're not worried black will do something you get one move you pick how you want to develop and we still have rookie one knight c3 we got these attacking ideas in the position this is going to be incredibly easy for white to play so i think black is already in grave danger here tries to play bishop to e6 and now comes knight to c3 attacking the queen driving her away and yet again what exactly would you do here as white in this game i mean a lot of tempting moves again maybe rookie one no he just wants to try to clear miles try to open everything up just get rid of those center pawns if the center pawns come off it's actually going to be very very good for white not much black can do so black did end up taking but after knight takes queen takes the final move of the game was rooked to e1 and it just looks so simple yeah i mean it's so easy to just win with the evans gambit if you're paul morphy but uh yeah here the reason that black had to resign now that all the files all the diagonals are open it's either going to be checkmate or you lose your queen but maybe both hear something like i mean if you run away you're not going to be able to really block without losing a lot of material something like bishop to e4 is going to be very strong for white uh one idea being that you're gonna lose some material here and if you go like this it looks like one of these rooks you pick which one you want is going to be a checkmate so this was the final move of the game paul morphy taken down his dad and yeah just another awesome example of taking over the center and then just opening up these files play bishop a3 and just uh just checkmate your opponent here so let's get one more game in this is paul morphy versus jean adolph laro and this game was yet another uh evans gambit and after c3 this time we will look at what is now at least the main line which is bishop to a5 and here he plays d4 i wasn't i couldn't remember if he played d4 if he just castled but this time he actually did and now knight to f6 comes and this again is probably a big mistake it's just so easy to fall into that's just the natural square for the night so so many players are going to be playing knight to f6 whenever you play the evan's gambit but uh yeah i mean there's two main options you can play d6 with some ideas of putting the guy back and trying to meet any queen to b3 with knight to a5 that's one of the normal ideas in this opening and the most common idea is after this capture to actually put this knight yet again on the e7 square where you might be able to play d5 and your knight's not going to get attacked by the move e5 but in our game knight to f6 yet again i mean this is always supernatural what are we gonna do here as white well of course he decides to open the position so he decides yeah let's just open the d file a little bit and after knight to g4 he finds yet another move so it's maybe we're not gonna be able to protect our e pawn right away so just develop your pieces and try to cause some sort of action and here already black is in some some trouble i mean it's really not easy f6 played takes knight f6 and now how shall we continue obviously it's very tempting to uh to just castle or something like that um e5 e5 so exploiting this pin here black really is going to struggle to get out of this pin it's really not going to be easy so somehow someway this position is just about to explode and open up h6 was tried and obviously maybe we could move our bishop but no he just decides let's open the game this is the strategy over and over we see what you want to do is you want to open the position and after the bishop was recaptured you have to find a very accurate move here which morphe was able to find only one move wins here so go ahead and see if you can win this game i think there's a lot a lot a lot of tempting options you know you can take you can push you can check uh queen can come all the way up you can just castle there's probably a lot of very tempting options for white but the move that wins is f takes g7 and if you look at this rook it's actually remarkable it doesn't have any squares so the rook is actually trapped on the back rank so after queen to e7 queen e2 and black had to resign because the queens can come off or stay on right now doesn't really matter the problem for black is this rook doesn't have anywhere to go so you're going to lose a rook or white's going to make a queen or something bad here is gonna happen so uh that just can happen that's the evan's gambit that's the way she goes that is uh kind of the dream situation here for white so hopefully this did give you kind of an idea of how to get the initiative how to get the attack just open up the files develop with tempo and crush all of your opponents the evan's gamut is very very very dangerous so let me know what you guys think of it in the comments below i'd really be happy to hear what you guys think of it and you know uh what else do you guys want to see here on the channel i'm always happy to do whatever so let me know in the comments below please subscribe to the channel and i'll see you guys next time for another video

Channel: Jonathan Schrantz

Views: 42,253

Keywords: chess, paul morphy, evans gambit, italian game, chess openings, chess openings explained, chess openings for white, jonathan schrantz, vampirechicken, zolpi

Id: r9AAVxr_0v8

Length: 16min 54sec (1014 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 26 2020