1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 - the Italian Game - and now 4.b4. The Evans Gambit. When it burst onto the scene in the 19th century, one admirer called it a gift from the gods to a languishing chess world. Nearly two centuries later, IM Andrew Martin makes the case that the gift is still very much worth accepting.
Is the Evans playable in the 21st century? At the very top, perhaps mainly as a surprise weapon, but as Andrew points out, that leaves the other 99.99% of us free to enjoy it in full. And there are good reasons to. The Evans leads to exciting chess. It teaches the art of attack and rewards the player who's willing to calculate a combination rather than simply churn out the safe, fireproof moves of a system opening. And then there's the best reason of all: to win.
What began as a book on the Evans for 1800-rated players grew into something bigger. Rather than stop at 4.b4, Andrew backs up a couple of moves and builds a complete repertoire for everything Black can try after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3, the Petroff, the Philidor, the Hungarian Defense, and the whole menagerie of tricky gambits: the Elephant, the Latvian, the Copycat Trap and more. And because the course and the book deliberately don't overlap, owning both gives you more than one repertoire suggestion for each opening.
Andrew opens the way he likes to approach any opening: with inspiration and entertainment, a brisk tour through the Evans as it has evolved from the early days. It isn't the whole story, and he's the first to say so, but there's nothing wrong with starting in a positive frame of mind and seeing the very best of what your opening can do.
Let's play some chess.