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Unfortunately, the rook is often a major player in the normal lines, since part of the point of the double gambit is to recapture a pawn on c3 with the knight to allow the rapid development of the queen's rook.

Steve B wrote:

lkaufman wrote:4.b4. Evan's gambit may not be completely correct, but if it's good enough for Kasparov to beat Anand, it's surely worth playing in a rook odds game against a bookless opponent!

Interesting approach
Connie could well get caught in the intricate subtleties of the Gambit early on ..when the extra R makes no difference
obviously this not an approach that a PC engine would ever even consider

Hmmm Regards
Steve

Crafty plays the Evans all the time, in fact. Watched one night before last on ICC. Against humans it offers interesting complications. Against good computers, it just offers a free pawn.

bob wrote:

Steve B wrote:

lkaufman wrote:4.b4. Evan's gambit may not be completely correct, but if it's good enough for Kasparov to beat Anand, it's surely worth playing in a rook odds game against a bookless opponent!

Interesting approach
Connie could well get caught in the intricate subtleties of the Gambit early on ..when the extra R makes no difference
obviously this not an approach that a PC engine would ever even consider

Hmmm Regards
Steve

Crafty plays the Evans all the time, in fact. Watched one night before last on ICC. Against humans it offers interesting complications. Against good computers, it just offers a free pawn.

Well Connie is certainly playing very "human" like here
actually she is acting like she has an eating disorder as she continues to gobble pawns with...
6..exd4

[d] r1bqk1nr/pppp1ppp/2n5/b7/2BpP3/2P2N2/P4PPP/1NBQK2R w Kkq - 0 7

Babette's Feast Regards
Steve

I think even funner than watching a GM play against a dedicated unit is Steve's quips during the game...

Bob, I presume you mean "the Crafty opening book plays the Evans'...". If Crafty (or any program) actually played the Evans' on its own, I would be truly amazed! White gets almost enough comp for the pawn; if I had to choose between playing the White side of Evans' Gambit or playing Black in a normal chess game I would choose White, regardless of the opponent.

lkaufman wrote:Bob, I presume you mean "the Crafty opening book plays the Evans'...". If Crafty (or any program) actually played the Evans' on its own, I would be truly amazed! White gets almost enough comp for the pawn; if I had to choose between playing the White side of Evans' Gambit or playing Black in a normal chess game I would choose White, regardless of the opponent.

In Short's secret training match against Ponomariov, Short played it twice IIRC.

Well, Short is known for playing Evan's Gambit quite often in serious play.

lkaufman wrote:Bob, I presume you mean "the Crafty opening book plays the Evans'...". If Crafty (or any program) actually played the Evans' on its own, I would be truly amazed! White gets almost enough comp for the pawn; if I had to choose between playing the White side of Evans' Gambit or playing Black in a normal chess game I would choose White, regardless of the opponent.

Of course.

As far as which side I'd choose, I'd choose white. But then I'd choose white in the Fried Liver and such as well. Unless a lot of money was on the game. Then gimme black.

Mike Valvo and I were good friends over the years, and played a fair number of blitz games at ACM events (him against Cray Blitz and him against me at times). I used to always piss 'im off because I would play something wildly aggressive and have fun playing, while he got to defend and eke out a methodical win when I made the inevitable mistake.

Unlike you, I never play a gambit I don't believe to be sound, and I don't play Evan's Gambit (although I did as a teenager). But I believe it to be "almost sound", i.e. not worse than playing Black normally is.

7.castles (0-0). Now I expect Connie to take another pawn, for fear that I might otherwise win one of them back! This is known as the "compromised" defense to Evan's (in normal chess). Although it has a bad reputation, my Rybka/IDeA analysis claims it to be good enough for equality, although I think that in practice White wins more often than Black in this line. Of course this has little to do with the present rook-odds situation.