Bishop’s Gambit | King’s Gambit Opening Theory

The Bishop’s Gambit was Bobby Fischer’s favorite weapon against the King’s Gambit Accepted. The move 3. Bc4 is played instead of Nf3, the main line. It’s a very natural move and it serves a direct purpose; put pressure on black, especially on the f7 weakness and develop the piece to its most natural square. An upside of moving the bishop instead of the knight is that black no longer has the strong idea of protecting his extra f4 pawn with g5-g4, because the maneuver no longer forces the knight to move away from the f3 square. The downsides are obvious too. White leaves the h4 square weak and black is able to misplace the white king with the immediate Qh4+, which is why most people steer away from Bc4. The second downside is that black often gets to play d5 with tempo on the bishop. Nevertheless, the variation is very solid for white. In fact, I would argue that it leads to better positions for white then the Nf3 line. Bobby Fischer claimed that he defeated the Nf3 line with his Fischer Defense (watch the video on it here:    • Fischer Defense | King’s Gambit Opening Th...  ), but he said nothing about Bc4 and kept playing it himself! After 3. Bc4, black has four possible continuations (four good continuations that is): 04:15 3...Nf6 Cozio Defense (Bogoljubov) is considered the main line. 09:40 3...d5 Bledow Variation gives back the extra pawn immediately and doesn’t pose enough of a challenge to white in my opinion. 16:38 3...Qh4+ is the most logical and most aggressive continuation. Black uses the option to punish white for not safeguarding the h4 square. Here I can’t find a line in which white can be sure he will manage to equalize. Black seems to be better (but can blunder, of course)! 13:10 3...Ne7 Steinitz Defense #chess #kingsgambit