I've got my pairing for this week for the TeamLeague on FICS, and I looked up my opponent's recent games to see what openings he plays. He always plays 1. e4 as white, to which I normally respond with the French these days. Looking at one of his recent games, he played the Milner-Barry Gambit, which I don't know very well, and he seems to have played it very well.

I considered switching to something else instead of 1. ... e6 in my game against this guy, just to avoid playing him in a gambit that he knows much better than I do, but I realized I wouldn't learn anything that way. I want to study this gambit some for the next couple of days until my game so that I'm really prepared to take this guy on at his own game. I may lose, but I'll learn a lot about a dangerous line that I could face again in the future, as long as I continue playing the French.

I know there's a lecture on FICS that has a supposed refutation to it, so I need to go figure out how to request specific lectures from the lecture bot there. Other than that, does anyone have any advice on how to play against this gambit? Any good web sites on it?

--Fromper

Hi,
I am not at all a good player, but I have some good experience in French defense as Black. You could simply play as if the gambit is not there (i.e. refusing the gambit), but as you said the best way to improve is to accept the gambit.
Once you accept it, my advice is prevent White from putting a Knight in b5, because every time I forgot to prevent it I entered a world of pains.
Yes, if you are a very good defender you could try take also the pawn in e5, but personally I find it too risky. So, after tacking the d4 pawn (after Qxd4 I mean) usually I play a6 as soon as there is a menace of Nb5.

The first game in this link is a nice example of how to play against MB Gambit

Tactics by IM Nikolay Minev: Inside Chess November 1999

ohhh ahhhhh. you have to fight the ol Milner huh? well then in my eyes you have two choices: choice 1: you could loose, or, choice 2: you could loose worse. If you play the french when you know that your oppenent might play the Milner-Barry then you are begging to be spanked!

Just kidding of course, if it was that good than no one would play the french, besides I don't know anything about the gambit. I will play over the game in the link later when I have more time, hopefully I can help but I only play 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Ne2 against the french and im guessing that that dosn't lead to the opening under discussion. Besides that I wish you luck in your upcoming game and I have to ask FICS has tournaments? Are they free? I like to play lightning chess sometimes on FICS. I think thier tournaments would be fun.

Hey Fromper. So I ran this situation with Chessmaster and this is what it suggested. After e4, e6 2. d4, d6 Chessmaster recammends the following for White



Analysis: You move your knight to d2, which removes the threat on your pawn at e4. Black counters with pawn to c5, which threatens your pawn at d4. You move your knight at g1 to f3, which removes the threat on your pawn at d4. Black replies by moving knight to c6. You move your bishop to b5, which pins Black's knight at c6 and enables the short castle. Black answers with pawn at c5 takes pawn. You castle. Black responds by moving the bishop to d7, which frees Black's knight at c6 from the pin. Your pawn takes pawn, which attacks Black's knight at c6. Black answers with pawn takes pawn, which protects Black's knight at c6.

As a result of this line of play, your attack potential is somewhat increased. In addition, Black's pawn formation is demolished. Also, the pressure on Black's King is slightly increased.

For Black the situation is different. It said that after 1. e4 e6 2. d4, d5 3.Nd2...Black should play the following...


Analysis: You move your knight to f6. White counters with the pawn to e5, which attacks your knight at f6. You move your knight at f6 to d7, which moves it to safety. White counters by moving the bishop to d3. You move your pawn to c5, which attacks White's pawn at d4. White replies by moving pawn to c3, which removes the threat on White's pawn at d4. You move your knight to c6. White counters by moving the knight to e2, which enables the short castle. You move your bishop to e7, which enables the short castle.

Anyway I hope that this was helpful. I think if you just concentrate and tell yourself that you can win, you'll do okay. It's bad news to think that your going to lose, A wise man once said this: "As a man thinketh, so is he" good luck.

Thanks for the link, vindalooMan. I'll look over that game.

Lanced, there are short tournaments at blitz or lightning time controls all the time on FICS. What I'm playing in now is a longer team tournament, where it's one game per week at 45 45 time control. Check out FICS Team League for the details.

SteinMind, I think you were a little confused about the question. I wasn't asking how to play against the French as white. I'm playing the French as black, and I expect my opponent to play a particular line against it.

The Milner-Barry Gambit is a line of the Advance variation of the French that begins 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6 6.Bd3 cxd4 7.cxd4 Bd7 8.O-O Nxd4 9.Nxd4 Qxd4 10.Nc3. Sometimes white switches the move order to play 8. Nc3 and 10. O-O, but the end result is the same.

The first 5 moves by both sides are standard French Advance. White's 6th move is a trap, as it makes the d4 pawn appear under-defended, but after the trade of c pawns, black can't just play 7. ... Nxd4?? 8. Nxd4 Qxd4?? because then 9. Bb5+ wins the black queen. Black's 7. ... Bd7 prevents this. It's the fact that white then ignores the threat to his d4 pawn that makes it a gambit.

White gives up his center pawns (both of them) in order to get active piece play in the hopes of attacking up the center of the board while black's king is stuck in the center, uncastled. Theoretically, this is unsound, and black should win, but it requires accurate defense on the part of black to survive the attack, trade all the pieces away, and head into the endgame with an extra pawn or two and a theoretical win.

From the stuff I've looked at the last couple of days, I think I'm starting to get a good feel for how this gambit usually goes. I tend to be better at defense than offense, so I think I'll do ok in this game. If anyone's really curious to see it, my game's at 13:00 server time Saturday (server time is USA Pacific time, so I think that's 21:00 GMT). My handle on FICS is the same as here (Fromper), so you can either watch while I play or else check my history to see the result after it's over.

--Fromper

I won, and I definitely feel comfortable playing this opening if it comes up in the future now that I studied for it this way. Definitely a good learning game for me. Thanks for the responses.

My opponent messed up early. I transposed by playing Bd7 before trading the c pawns, and it threw him off so he wasted a move playing h3 instead of just castling immediately, so he ended up a tempo down from the normal gambit line. This allowed me to play Bb4, preventing his rook from going to e1, and pretty much killing the gambit's effectiveness. Then later in the game, he made the mistake of letting me open up the f file for an attack on his f2 pawn, and it was all over.

Here's the whole game if anyone's interested:

[Event "FICS rated standard game"]
[Site "FICS, San Jose, California USA"]
[Date "2007.10.27"]
[Time "16:02:47"]
[Round "-"]
[White "opponent"]
[Black "Fromper"]
[WhiteElo "1725"]
[BlackElo "1729"]
[TimeControl "2700+45"]
[Mode "ICS"]
[Result "0-1"]

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 c5 4. c3 Nc6 5. Nf3 Qb6 6. Bd3 Bd7 7. h3 cxd4
8. cxd4
Nxd4 9. Nxd4 Qxd4 10. O-O Bb4 11. Qe2 a6 12. Rd1 Qh4 13. a3 Bc5 14. Nc3
Ne7 15. Bd2 O-O 16. Rac1 Rac8 17. Qf3 Bd4 18. Re1 Bc6 19. Bb1 Ng6 20.
Bxg6
fxg6 21. Qe2 Rxf2 22. Qxf2 Qxf2+
{White resigns} 0-1

--Fromper