I'm learning to play the Smith-Morra, mostly by reading the Chessville intro articles about it. At my level, I don't want to spend a lot of time on opening study, but I do want to make sure I know enough to dive in without getting caught in the common mistakes of the opening.

In the second game, you countered the Siberian trap with 9. g3. after your opponent had already played Ng4. The Chessville article doesn't mention that possibility, though it seems pretty effective. It talks about Nb5 to attack the queen instead.

But it says it's better to counter the trap as soon as your opponent plays Qc7, since you already know where they're heading. Instead of following normal development, you can play Qe2 immediately, then push e5 on the next move to block the diagonal.

That part of the article is here: Chessville - Instruction - Openings - Smith Morra Gambit Part 7

--Fromper

Yes, well, I didn't know where it was heading, since I didn't see the trap before that game (I actually almost played 9. h3 )

Heh. That's kind of surprising. I just figured you'd seen the trap before, given how strong a player you are and the fact that you play this opening. I keep seeing it pop up everywhere I've seen info about this gambit online. Actually, even before that, I had seen that position (after h3) in a book of tactical puzzles as a "Black to play and win" puzzle.

I was just curious if you always play g3 against it. That actually seems less sharp than Nb5, and probably works out to be safer because of it. The only downside seems to be that you're weakening your pawn structure in front of your castled king, which could be a factor if black manages to start a king side assault later. King side attacks by black don't seem to be a common occurrence in this gambit, though, so that's probably not a major issue.

--Fromper

I don't play the Morra that often anymore, since I had a few bad beats where black played accurately and I got a worse position. I only played it for a while, and hadn't read about that trap before until in that game.

And that I am a strong player doesn't mean I know many variations. It just means that the chance is bigger that I find the right variation on the board. Whether you know it or not has more to do with experience, and how long you have been playing it. I've only played it for maybe half a year, so I didn't have much experience with it yet

My fav line against the morra gambit is :

1.e4 c5 2.d4 cxd4 3.c3 d3, i give back the pawn and White will have to play c4 at one moment, i think the position is ok for Black.

I recently purchased the Foxy Openings DVD on the Morra Gambit Declined by IM Andrew Martin, so I've been learning a LOT about the declined lines. That line is regarded as pretty good for white. White will play c4 and Bxd3 as his next two moves (in either order), then bring out the knights to c3 and f3, gaining pretty strong control over the center of the board.

The only advantage for black is that Smith-Morra players don't see this very often, so you get them out of their book preparation. At low-intermediate levels, this is probably worthwhile by itself.

I don't play the Sicilian as black, but I recently entered a Smith-Morra Gambit theme correspondence tournament on chess.com to practice it as white, so I've had to play it as black in half my games. Based on what I learned from Martin's DVD, my preferred line in the games where I'm black is to decline the gambit with 3. ... g6, but NOT play Bg7 right away. Follow it up with 4. ... d5, planning to play Bg4 to pin white's knight if he plays Nf3. Black then plays Nc6, Nh6, and Nf5 to attack d4, along with Bg7 and O-O. This works well if white just follows routine development and doesn't know how to handle this specific line.

I haven't actually played this yet, as I started my games in the first round of that tournament before I learned this much, so I don't have any examples. I'm doing pretty well in the tourney so far, so I should make it to the second round and get a chance to try this line then. I also want to transcribe the main lines from the DVD to give myself cheat sheets, so when I get to that section, maybe I'll post that here to show you what I mean.

--Fromper

Has anyone ever seen a "Danish-Morra Gambit"? I saw a few days ago in a blitz game against me, and I just adopted a Scheveningen-like structure, because I remember learning it is extremely solid a hard to attack at. The moves go: 1. e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4 3. c3 dxc3 4. Bc4 cxb2 5. Bxb2. It is basically a Danish gambit but black has an open c-file and an extra center pawn. I remember my opponent won a rook, but I managed to win the game by opening the g-file.

I would play the Smith Morra, but I enjoy the race-to-mate, opposite-side castling, pawn storming attacks that often follow the Sicilian.