Steinitz had argued that an attack is only justified when a player has an advantage, and an advantage is only obtainable after the opponent makes a mistake. FM Graham Burgess, in his book The Mammoth Book of Chess, noted the discrepancy between the King's Gambit and Wilhelm Steinitz's accumulation theory. It loses by force" and offered his Fischer Defense (3.d6) as a refutation. François-André Danican Philidor (1726–1795), the greatest player and theorist of his day, wrote that the King's Gambit should end in a draw with best play by both sides, stating that "a gambit equally well attacked and defended is never a decisive, either on one side or the other." Writing over 150 years later, Siegbert Tarrasch, one of the world's strongest players in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, pronounced the opening "a decisive mistake" and wrote that "it is almost madness to play the King's Gambit." Similarly, future world champion Bobby Fischer wrote a famous article, "A Bust to the King's Gambit", in which he stated, "In my opinion the King's Gambit is busted. Nevertheless, players have held widely divergent views on it. The King's Gambit was one of the most popular openings for over 300 years, and has been played by many of the strongest players in many of the greatest brilliancies, including the Immortal Game. It is infrequently seen at master level today, as Black has several methods to gain equality, but is still popular at amateur level. The King's Gambit was one of the most popular openings until the late 19th century, when improvements in defensive technique led to its decline in popularity. It was examined by the 17th-century Italian chess player Giulio Cesare Polerio. The King's Gambit is one of the oldest documented openings, appearing in one of the earliest chess books, Luis Ramírez de Lucena's Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez (1497).
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With a black pawn on f4, White cannot usually respond to the check with g3, but if the king is forced to move then it also loses the right to castle. A downside to the King's Gambit is that White weakens their own king's position, exposing it to the latent threat of. Theory has shown that, in order to maintain the gambit pawn, Black may well be forced to weaken the kingside with moves such as. The alternative plan is to play Nf3 and Bc4 followed by 0-0, when the semi-open f-file created after a pawn push to g3 allows White to attack the weakest point in Black's position, the pawn on f7. The first is to play d4 and Bxf4, regaining the gambit pawn with central domination.
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If Black accepts the gambit, White has two main plans. White offers a pawn to divert the black e-pawn. The King's Gambit is a chess opening that begins with the moves: