Still Crazy After All These Years

Gary Lane, in his current Opening Lanes column, observes: "It is always very hard to track down Blackmar-Diemer Gambit games because the vast majority are played by casual players at weekend tournaments and those score sheets rarely make an appearance on a computer database"

True. But Gary comes up with several interesting games, including a previously unpublished one by Roald Berthelsen, who has been playing the BDG longer (and better) than I have, and that's quite a long time.

How long? Here's one of Berthelsen's BDGs published by Nick Kampars in the second issue (March 1962) of his Blackmar-Diemer Gambit insert in Chess World.

	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

Berthelsen, R. - Dahl, E.

1-0 (CS of Norway) 1960

[#] 1.d4 d5 2.e4 dxe4 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.f3 exf3 5.Nxf3 e6 6.Bg5 Be7 7.Qd2 b6 8.Bd3 Bb7 9.O-O Bxf3 10.Rxf3 Qxd4+ 11.Kh1 Nbd7 12.Re1 c6 13.Rxe6 Ne5

[13...fxe6 14.Bg6+ ]

14.Re3

[Rybka finds that White traps the Queen with 14.Rf4 Qc5 (14...Qd8 15.Rxe5 ) 15.b4 ]

14...Nc4?

[14...fxe6 15.Bg6+ Nxg6 16.Qxd4 O-O 17.Re1± ]

15.Rxe7+ Kf8

[15...Kd8? 16.Qf2 (16.Qe2 Nxe3 17.Rxe3 Kc7 18.Re7+ Kd6 19.Be3 Qh4 (19...Qb4 20.a3 Qa5 21.Bf4+ ) 20.Bc5+ Kxc5 21.Qe3+ ) 16...Nxe3 17.Rxf7 Nxc2 18.Qg3 Rc8 19.Ne4 Re8 20.Nxf6 Re1+ 21.Qxe1 Nxe1 22.Nxh7+ leads to mate.]

16.Rxf7+ Kxf7 17.Bg6+ Kxg6 18.Qxd4 Nxe3 19.Bxe3 and Black resigned after several moves--some notes by Kampars. [1-0]

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