The great thing about gambits like this is that you immediately force them out of their comfort zone into an opening that they don't know. If you let white play on their typical opening you need to have a good defense against all of the most popular openings such as the Italian or Ruy Lopez. In this opening, you immediately give yourself the initiative and you don't need to memorize a million things based on what white plays. My favorite types of openings are the openings that have a ton of traps and are not principled at all. And when they are rare and unknown is the cherry on top. Thank you for making this video. I will happily study this opening. (also to anyone looking for a nice trappy opening for white, I like the Haxo Gambit. I've been studying it and I love it.) Edit: I am now a proud subscriber and I am looking forward to learning more openings on this channel.
In my opinion, the best option for white against Stafford is 5. f3. It controls the g4 square so that all the attacking idea in stafford gambit decays immediately.
Actually, h4 is probably better than f3. .it severely limits the Stafford options over there. And following that w/queenside castling allows W to center-attack.
I have be TRYING to find a way to get out of the Scandinavian for DECADES. Even though 2.e5 is considered toothless, it drives me nuts because I despise closed positions and do badly in it. ANY opening that allows e5 neuters my entire army unable to play ...Nf6. Sicilian, French and Carokann aren't options because of this... hypermodern defenses = more of the same, and I despise either side of a fianchetto anyways. I WANTED to play "reverse King's Gambits", (Rousseau, Luccini, Calabrese, & Jaenisch Scliemann etc.) but the amount of theory needed is way too much to even create theory to study! I have something like 700 lines of theory only to move & generally, and I'm not even half way through the repertoire! 2 Knights SUCKS as it has losing stats. That leaves "the drawish Petroff". Would you say that the Petroff is fairly easy to learn for a rabid gambiteer like me? It was suggested to me years ago as "a simple way to force draws against higher rated players, simply mirroring white's moves until it's time to break symmetry". I don't like draws and am positionally clueless. I like open centers and fast attacks. I see the stats for the Stafford are = to slightly better, so I'm trying to find out if it's my ticket to ending e5 cramps forever without needing to memorize 10 million lines of theory. I don't remember WHY... but the Elephant Gambit didn't look appealing to me either and Latvian is PURE TRASH! I'm watching the video now, and LIKE the Hartlaub Charlick style open center files already! THAT's my kind of opening!
Pawn to e5 variation is missing line 9.Qf4... If black not accept the queen trade there is no good square to run away with queen, and white just exchange it in next move lol. 9.Qf4 Be7 10.Qxh4 Bxh4 11.0-0. Ooops the Stafford goes to trashcan 😂. This can be played for thoose who not like 5.f3 (and 0-0-0).
9:51 if you want to continue attacking with black you can play h5!? here (bolstering Ng4) instead of Nxe4 because of white plays h3?? then Ng4!! is winning for black, ive won a couple nice games but you do need engine prep to not get killed as black due to a severe lack of material
You said that white sencond most common move is g3 but you did not mention the first common move f3 which attack the knight and move the f2 pawn to a save square and as result of all of this thw gambit fail
but isn't f3 a very bad move if the king is not castled queenside yet? ofcourse our traps won't work now but white has willingly weakened their position instead so that is in our favor as well
