1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.b4
Towards the end of the 1820s, the sea captain William Davies Evans (1790-1872) created a gambit against the Italian Game, which was soon to make its triumphal march through the chess world. The attacking players of this era quickly realised what a dangerous weapon they had been given, and they used it as a welcome alternative to the King's Gambit. Anderssen's famous "Evergreen Game" against Dufresne opened with the Evans Gambit and the American Paul Morphy, the best player of his time, played it almost exclusively against 3...Bc5. In our days this gambit seemed almost forgotten. But then Garry Kasparov took it up in 1995, winning against Anand and Piket in under thirty moves each and bringing it back into tournament practice.
The idea of the gambit is quite simple. After 4...Bxb4 White wants to advance in the centre by winning the tempo with 5.c3 and 6.d4.
The queen is often quickly brought to b3 in order to increase the pressure of the bishop on the weak point f7. The black-squared bishop is deployed on the c1-h6 or a3-f8 diagonal. The white initiative can quickly become dangerous. Emanuel Lasker (1868-1941) developed the famous defence named after him against these plans with the move sequence 5...Ba5 6.0-0 d6 7.d4 Bb6,
which after 8.dxe5 dxe5 9.Qxd8+ Nxd8 10.Nxe5 gives back the pawn to achieve a good endgame. But White can avoid the simplifications of the Lasker Defence with 6.d4. 6...d6 can then be answered with 7.Qb3, and after 6...exd4
White has the choice between 7.0-0 or 7.Qb3. Nigel Short has played this position several times with White and has also revitalised other variations of the gambit with fresh ideas.
The Evans Gambit is and remains a dangerous weapon in the hands of good attacking players and still leads to exciting and entertaining games today.