“After making move, accidentally punch opponent instead of clock.”

I’ve heard for this quote before, but I didn’t take it too seriously. It’s just a joke, isn’t it? Well I was also thinking it’s just a joke until I went to Hungary on some friendly blitz tournament two years ago. I lost the first game and in the second game, I was playing against some guy from Croatia. I was happy because we were from the same country. We met each other and had little conversation before the game started.

In the game, I was playing White and I opened the game with e4, as always. The game went into Giuoco Piano (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5) and I automatically played b4 as the next move. It’s Evans Gambit and the idea is to sacrifice the pawn for rapid development. Captain W. D. Evans played this gambit for the first time in London, in 1827. After that, some great players, such as Morphy, Lasker, Kasparov, Fischer (…), played the gambit with great success.

Let’s back to the game. When Mr. H. (let’s call my opponent Mr. H.) saw the b4-move, he made some weird facial expression, carefully looked me in the eyes, then the board again. He took the pawn with Bishop and then punched me in the face. Are you asking why? Well, ask Captain Evans why.

And what happened with tournament? Well I stood up full of angry and started swearing. Then I took his Bishop and hit him in the eye. Everybody looked at me with wtf-expression and then I was disqualified from the tournament.

In the next article: the second part of the story and something more about Evans Gambit declined.

And in the meantime, be careful! You never know who can punch you in the face!

Other lectures:

Evans Gambit (part 1)

Evans Gambit (part 2)

Evans Gambit (part 3)

Fischer-Sozin Attack (part 1)