There are players for whom an extra pawn is worth nothing and an open file towards the king is everything. If you are one of them, this selection is for you: seven openings built on a sacrifice. In some you give up a pawn for tempi and the centre, in others a whole piece for an irresistible attack.
The main skill in all of these starts is the same: count the initiative rather than the material. While your opponent finishes off the gift, you develop pieces, open lines and drag the king into the firing line. Every opening below can be played through on the board move by move.
A gambit works exactly as long as you are ahead of your opponent in development. Sacrifice for a concrete initiative rather than for beauty, and convert the attack into material in good time when it runs out of steam.
The Danish and King's Gambits: for a pawn White gets a crushing attack, and without precise preparation Black is in trouble. In blitz they bring in a great many points.
Many sharp gambits equalise in theory against precise defence, so they turn up less often at elite level. But in practical play the initiative for a pawn is worth a lot - defending under pressure is harder than attacking.
With the Evans Gambit and the King's Gambit for White: clear plans for opening lines and attacking f7. With Black, the Two Knights Defence. They teach the main thing - playing to get there first.
If you are just starting out, have a look at the rules of chess and how to set the board up.
The Vibe Chess app opens from a link and needs no installation. Setting up a tournament takes a minute: pick the system, set the date, the venue and the time control - the app handles the rest.
Vibe Chess runs chess meetups - networking evenings in cities across Russia: Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and more. For companies we run corporate chess tournaments, and every city and format is gathered on the home page.
Open the Vibe Chess app - it has the schedule of meetups and chess events across the cities, the registration and your own tournaments.
