This old booklet has had to be split into three parts:

1 content/playing-black-against-queens-pawn-...

2 content/playing-black-against-queens-pawn-...

Contents

• Introduction
• Principles
• See also: Contempt for Pawns

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Introduction

The Senior American Master Ken Smith, who died last month (February 1999), was an advocate of gambits. He was a noted practitioner of the Morra Gambit against the Sicilian , viz.: 1. e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4 3. c3 ), which some American players still refer to as the Smith-Morra Gambit.

A1.2 The Semi-Slav

Why not a whole one? The ordinary line Slav goes

1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3 dxc4 5. a4

and Black has tried the quiet 5...Na6, the active 5...Bg4 and the main line 5...Bf5. This last is a well known and popular line and is worth a look.

This club is a GP-free zone

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Nc3 Nf6 5.d3 d6

Support the campaign for d2-d4 by playing 4. c3, 4. b4 or 3. d4!

I don't like doing so many sessions on Openings, because we all play different ones, but while Rex was asking me about the English it occurred to me that I have played more English Opening games than any other over the last 15-20 years, but I have never tried to teach anybody about it. So I sat down and tried to put together this session.

  I immediately realised why it wasn't such a natural thing to do, because the damn thing is so diffuse and complex. [I wouldn't dream of doing a session which I had narrowed down to "1.d4", even less so if there were vast transpositional