Fischer Defense

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The Fischer Defense ['Defence' in non-US English] to the King's Gambit is a chess opening that begins (in algebraic notation):

1. e4 e5

2. f4 exf4

3. Nf3 d6

In the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings, the Fischer Defense gets code C34.

[edit] Ideas Behind the Opening

Fischer called 3... d6 "a high-class waiting move." The idea of it is to avoid the Kieseritzky Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 4.h4 g4 5.Ne5) and free the queen's bishop, as well as giving an extra space for the king to run to if necessary.

After 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 d6 the most common response is 4.d4. If white now tries to force transpositions to Berlin or Classical defence positions then white can end up in difficult positions (eg. 4.d4 g5 5.h4 g4 6.Ng5 f6 7.Nh3 gxh3 8.Qh5+ Kd7 9.Bxf4 Qe8 10.Qf3 Kd8 and black has a better position due to the reversed king and queen).

Another popular move is 4.Bc4 which is often met by 4... h6. Fischer dubbed this the "Berlin Defence Deferred". It stops the white knight on f3 from moving to the two dangerous squares e5 and g5.

[edit] History

After Bobby Fischer lost a 1960 game at Mar del Plata to Boris Spassky, in which Spassky played the Kieseritsky Gambit, Fischer left in tears and promptly went to work at devising a new defense to the King's Gambit. In a 1961 article in the American Chess Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1, titled "A Bust to the King's Gambit", he put forth this idea and brashly claimed that it refuted the King's Gambit, which was clearly an overstatement. Fischer concluded the article with the famously arrogant line, "Of course white can always play differently in which case he merely loses differently."(1) Nonetheless, the article was possibly the most influential ever written about an opening, and ever since the King's Gambit has been rare in grandmaster play, though a few grandmasters such as Joseph Gallagher still use it.

(1)In the originally published article this comment was marked by the parenthetical expression "Thank you Weaver Adams!" a reference to Weaver Warren Adams (see [1]) who wrote a book "White to Play and Win" which attempted to prove that with 1.e4 White would always win, and ended his book by stating "if Black plays differently he merely loses differently." It is not known whether this line was added by the Editors of American Chess Quarterly, or by Fischer himself, but if Fischer did add the line, it demonstrates that he did have some sense of humor, since in the next tournament after Weaver Adams published his book, he lost three games and drew one as white, while winning all of his games as black (see [2])