David Sedgwick wrote: ↑Thu Apr 21, 2022 2:15 pm
How about 10 Qa4 Nc6; 11 Nbd2 Be3; 12. fe3 Bc4; 13 Qc4 Qe7 ?
Yes, thanks, David, that's better than anything I've come up with. It leaves open the possibility of 12...Qxc3, though that looks like a risky pawn snatch and it's not surprising for a wary player of the black pieces to give it a miss.
Another thing of interest here is the opening variation 1 e4 e5 2 d4 exd4
3 Bc4 which BCM calls the
Centre Gambit. This name was new to me until recently. I came across it whilst browsing some 1890s and 1900s material in BCM and contemporary newspapers. The variation seemed to enjoy something of a vogue at the time, at least amongst players below master strength. I googled 'Centre Gambit' and very little that was useful came up. Then I stumbled on an article in BCM, August 1898, page 324, entitled
The BCM Guide to the Openings: The Centre Game, by 'Hobart'. (I discovered this was Francis Joseph Young (1847-1922) via Anders Thulin's excellent
article on chess pseudonyms which pointed me to the right place in Gaige's
Chess Personalia). The BCM article makes it clear that the Centre Gambit is 1 e4 e5 2 d4 exd4 3 Bc4, whereas (as is very well known) 3 Qxd4 is the Centre Game and 3 c3 the Danish Gambit. (I added a note to the Wikipedia article on the Centre Game to this effect.)
The Oxford Companion to Chess makes no mention of the Centre Gambit, nor does my 1960s copy of MCO, nor Znosko-Borovsky's
How to Play the Chess Openings (7th ed., 1964). As a variation it doesn't have much independent theory of its own as it usually transposes into a Scotch, Bishop's Opening or Giuoco Piano, which is probably why its name has disappeared from reference books. A few contemporary players have dabbled in it.