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The Eliana Gambit?!

The Eliana Gambit?!

A weird, fun idea for the daring blitz player.

Dennis Monokroussos's avatar
Dennis Monokroussos
Feb 23, 2024
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The Eliana Gambit?!
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A couple of decades ago(! - time flies) I was working at a chess camp for mostly intermediate-level kids, and on one of the days I showed them some interesting lines in the Italian Game. This included the Wilkes-Barre (aka the Traxler) Variation of the Two Knights: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 Bc5!?, which can continue 5.Nxf7 Bxf2+ 6.Kxf2 Nxe4+ and so on, with insane complications.

Naturally, I encouraged the campers to test some of these lines in their games with each other, but they didn’t always remember exactly what to do. One of the stronger students, though not the strongest, a girl named Eliana (apologies if I’m misspelling her name - Brian, please correct me if I got it wrong), tried to play the Wilkes-Barre, and misremembered the line in an interesting way…

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