Who doesn’t like a good counter gambit as black? There’s a certain excitement to surprising your opponent by offering material in the opening, especially as the second player. I love playing the Albin Counter-Gambit (1. d4 d5 c4 e5!?) myself; while perhaps not entirely sound, it has also never been truly refuted, and thus remains a valuable and practical choice for club players.
Due to my interest, I picked up T.D. Harding’s Counter Gambits: Black to Play and Win with much enthusiasm. I wanted to learn about the Latvian Gambit (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 f5?!), the Elephant Gambit (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d5?!) and more. While there is information on each of these openings, I couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed by the content in the book. That said, it’s not a bad book – I simply had expectations that didn’t match what Harding provided.
Harding’s book does cover just about any black gambit you’d ever want to play. Harding begins with the most fertile ground, open games with 1. e4 e5. From there he branches out to half open games, 1.d4 openings, and then finally the flank openings.
Openings are presented with a brief introduction, explaining the roots of the gambit in question and the general ideas behind black’s audacious plan. Harding then delves into a few illustrative games. To his credit, he does show black losses; while he certainly shows games that are optimistic for black, he does not go overboard, and is sure to show how things can go wrong as well.
Perhaps the best way to explain Harding’s presentation would be to examine his coverage of just one gambit. For this, I’ll use the Latvian Gambit, one of my personal points of interest.
Harding begins by explaining that this gambit was first played in the 17th century by Greco, and was then revived in the 20th century. Since then, it has had a cult following, despite the questionable soundness of the gambit. In fact, Harding tells us, a well prepared white player should be able to defeat the Latvian, even if the exact method for busting it isn’t clear.
Harding then presents us with three different illustrative games: two black wins, and one win for white. These games do cover many of the main lines in the Latvian Gambit, but only briefly look at some side lines. In all, there are six pages on the Latvian Gambit – enough to give a good idea of what this opening is about, but not nearly enough to prepare a player to play it confidently from the black side.
This pattern is repeated throughout the book. It isn’t a bad thing, by any means; you do get an understanding of these openings, you just won’t learn them deeply enough to end your studies here if you wish to play them. On the other hand, you will get enough information to eliminate the shock factor if you face these openings in play, or to play them yourself in blitz or casual games (or at lower levels, maybe even tournament play).
If you’re looking for a book that’ll give you an entire repertoire, this is not what you’re looking for. On the other hand, if you’d like a survey of just about every reasonable black gambit (and some unreasonable ones too!), pick this one up for an enjoyable read.
