I know the 1800+ crowd will say 'don't study traps and/or gambits', just study positional chess!
With that out of the way, anyone have opinions on which contains more successful gambits, traps, 1.e4 or 1.d4 opening?
Anyone read the book 'An Attacking Repertoire for White with 1.d4: Ambitious Ideas and Powerful Weapons by Victor Moskalenko and think it's very worthwhile?
Studying traps is a bad idea but I doubt any 1800+ would say the rest of that. Studying positional play is pointless if you don't have a solid understanding of tactics.
e4
No
At "lower" level it's not too uncommon that white goes for a trap in Queens Gambit declined. If you look up D51 Knight defense you will see it.
So it's actually black who has the trap.
I personally have played e4,d4,Nf3 and c4 and I believe e4 is by far the best way to go. e4 games tend to be more open and if you like your bishops more than your knights, chances are you will like e4 more.
The dogma not to study traps is wrong. First, it is important to know traps so as not to fall into them, if nothing else! Secondly, there are traps which are sound to set if the opponent has already made a mistake; it is important to know how to take advantage of the mistake, and that usually involves setting or pursuing a trap. Thirdly, some traps, perhaps a minority, are sound to set even without an opponent's mistake. That is, even if the opponent does not fall for the trap, the move to set it up was sound and playable.
The truth in the dogma is that one should not make moves which are NOT sound (that is, which are not best no matter what the opponent does in reply) merely to set a trap that requires a mistake by the opponent. That develops weak playing that works only against other weak players.
I was going to post what
@nayf did.
For beginners, I suggest only studying tactics, positional chess is left for more advanced students. Studying gambits and especially opening traps gives fun examples of most tactics.
As for the book, I skimmed it and find it very basic. However it does provide basic, sound lines which will get you to a playable middlegame. If you are comfortable with the resulting positions, then by all means this would be a good book. King Davy, if you are thinking of buying the book, I could provide an excerpt.
It never hurts to study traps,,,particularly opening traps, which can occur during what may seem to be good normal opening development. Irving Chernev has a book called "Winning Chess Traps" It has a lot of some practical classic examples of opening mistakes...both e4 and d4. which you can use to catch the unwary' and also need to avoid yourself :]
@DavyKOTWF My guess is that there are more traps from e4 because many of the traps used by lower rated players today are nothing new. They come from the very early days of chess when e4 was almost exclusively played. Youtube has many videos that cover "opening traps" and/or "dirty tactics"
The problem isn't learning them or even using them at times. I think it's important to know traps when you are lower rated because you will be attacked by them frequently and some of them are difficult to defend if you don't know them. The problem is structuring your game based on traps which ignore sound opening and development principles. Many times, they weaken your position if your opponent knows how to defend against them. If you can work them into openings that are otherwise solid, they can win games and get you playing against better players.
the budapest gambit has a great trap (D4 as black) and if they don't fall for it, you can still have a good game!
r1bqkb1r/ppp4p/2np2p1/8/2B1P3/5Q2/P4PPP/BN2K2R b K - 0 12 Try this!
