In this lesson, you will learn one of the most aggressive and powerful chess openings for White — the Evans Gambit. It arises in the Italian Game after the following opening moves: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.b4.

White sacrifices a pawn early but gains explosive activity, rapid development, and nonstop initiative, often forcing Black into mistakes. After black takes the pawn, white can follow-up with moves that force black to move away, while white is developing with tempo.

The Evans Gambit is one of the best openings to crush opponents rated below 1500 ELO. Most standard developing moves by your opponent can lead to disaster — traps, wasted time, and brutal attacks before they even finish developing.

Though this opening for white lost some popularity especially at high level play, the Evens Gambit gained it back when Garry Kasparov used it to win against Vishwanathan Anand in 1995. With that game from Riga during the Tal Memorial Tournament, interest in the Evans gambit was once again reignited.

Evans Gambit For White Video Lesson

Watch the full video lesson to see how even former Women’s World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk fell victim to the Evans Gambit.

Below, you can find the Evans Gambit variations shown in the video:

Openings are great to learn but improving in chess requires you to understand the different phases of the game. There are also other aspects to take into consideration like avoiding blunders and learning how to train effectively.

Knowing all that, I have created a course that covers all these topics and more. If this is what you’re interested in, check out Level Up Your Chess. It is divided into six sections covering these different topics. And, my big promise is that if you work on them, one section alone is enough to improve your game.