What’s Queen’s Gambit?
Throug history, people have looked for some ways to entertain themselves. One of the most ancient form of entertainent is using board games such as Backgammon, Checkers, Mancala, Dogs and Jackals, and Chess (One the most popular).
Chess is an ancient board game for two players only that requieres a lot of thinking and strategy. The players have to use a lot of tactics to make resign or checkmate the opponent. To checkmate means to leave the opponent with no legal movements. But both players must plan the movements since the opening of the game. And one of those tactics or tricky movements is the Queen’s Gambit. But, do you know what Queen’s Gambit is?
Queen’s Gambit is a Chess opening movement that consists in temporally sacrifying one of the pawns to obtain control of the center of the board and at the same time it makes the way free to the bishop to attack and regain the pawn, and it also gives the opportunity to one of the pawns to advance.
The term Gambit comes from the Italian word Gambetto which means Trip. And it is used because the pawn is temporally sacrified and not permanently lost. So with the good maneuver of the Bishop the player can recover it.
Eventhough it is an ancient movement, a lot of players do not accept it but the chessmasters. In history, there are some chessgames where this movement was well used. To mention some of those famous games we have: Anand vs Ponomariov (2002), Kasparov vs Gulko (1982), and Topalov vs Kramnik (2006).
There are even videos on the web that show how to perform this movement perfectly. But the trick is not only to know how to use it. There are also some ways to escape from this tactic (Queen’s Gambit decline) and make the opponent pay for it if the opponent does not know how to counter attack. But, the user of the Queen’s Gambit movement should know there are some variations to follow if the opponent goes for its declination.
Because of its tricky purpose in the game, the term Queen’s Gambit has been used in other areas such as literary works. As two good examples we have Queen’s Gambit by Elizabeth Fremantle, and The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis. Manuals based on how to decline it has been designed for those who want to learn it as it is the example of Declining the Queen’s Gambit by Everyman Chess and Queen’s Gambit Declined by Andrew Martin.
Some films and Video Games have used this term either. For example the shooting game for PC ARMA. In one of its versions, it has the name of ARMA, Queen’s Gambit because of the tactics the player must perform to accomplish the misions.
As this tactic is one of the oldest and most famous, players should know how to use it correctly. Because this game requires a lot of strategy, both players in the game should know how to use, decline, or counter attack the Queen’s Gambit opening.