Rice Gambit

King's Gambit, Rice Gambit

a b c d e f g h 8 8 7 7 6 6 5 5 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 a b c d e f g h
Moves	1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 4.h4 g4 5.Ne5 Nf6 6.Bc4 d5 7.exd5 Bd6 8.0-0
ECO	C39
Named after	Isaac Rice
Parent	King's Gambit

The Rice Gambit is a chess opening that arises from the King's Gambit Accepted. An offshoot of the Kieseritzky Gambit, it is characterized by the moves 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 g5 4. h4 g4 5. Ne5 Nf6 6. Bc4 d5 7. exd5 Bd6 8. 0-0 (instead of the normal 8.d4). White offers the sacrifice of the knight on e5 in order to get his king to safety and prepare a rook to join the attack against Black's underdeveloped position.

The Rice Gambit was heavily promoted by wealthy German-born, American businessman Isaac Rice towards the end of the 19th century. He sponsored numerous theme tournaments where the diagram position became the starting point of every game played. Such giants of the chess world as Emanuel Lasker, Mikhail Chigorin, Carl Schlechter, Frank Marshall, and David Janowski were among the participants. These events stretched from Monte Carlo, Saint Petersburg, and Ostend, to Brooklyn and Trenton Falls. In a 1905 Pillsbury National Correspondence Chess Association event, 230 amateurs played the gambit by mail. So obsessed was Rice with his pet line, he formed The Rice Gambit Association in 1904, at his home in New York. With Dr. Lasker as Secretary, the Association even published a book of all the games played in the theme tournaments.

Concrete analysis has long since shown the gambit to be "neither good nor necessary", so it has been abandoned in serious play and stands only as "a grotesque monument to a rich man's vanity". The Encyclopedia of Chess Openings (1997) analyzes