Jim West On Chess: Zilbermintz Gambit

Monday, March 3, 2008

Zilbermintz Gambit

After the opening moves in the Philidor Counter Gambit 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 f5 4.Bc4, Lev Zilbermintz likes to play 4...b5 which he has named the Newark Gambit. I think that a better name would be the Zilbermintz Gambit. Personally I prefer Morphy's move 4...Nc6 which overprotects the e5 pawn.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov