In the first of a new series, we invite Christof Brixel to discuss how he reinvented himself and his chess:
There is only one generation between me and the romantic era of chess. I learned the game from my grandmother when she was 88 years old. She had been born in 1878, around the time of the Steinitz–Chigorin World Championship matches, where the Evans Gambit regularly appeared on the board. Perhaps the King’s Gambit entered my bloodstream there and then.
If so, it disappeared quickly enough. As a junior I moved on to more positional openings, and after returning to competitive chess in London as a senior player, I eventually settled — like many London players — into the reassuring comfort of the London System.
But at the start of the 2025–26 season, I decided to try something entirely different.
I would spend a full season playing gambits.
Not occasionally. Not as a surprise weapon. As a philosophy.
I knew perfectly well what the engines thought of this idea. Many of the positions I intended to play were objectively slightly worse. But amateur chess is not played by engines. It is played by humans sitting at a board with limited time, imperfect calculation and fluctuating nerves.
And besides, I wanted to enjoy myself.
For White, I rebuilt my repertoire around the King’s Gambit and the Smith-Morra Gambit. Against 1.d4 as Black, I added the Albin Countergambit. I studied Daniel King’s material on the King’s Gambit, worked through Chessable courses by Ian Nepomniachtchi, analysed lines myself and spent weeks sharpening my tactical vision with daily puzzle training.
Most importantly, though, I prepared mentally.
For decades I had considered myself primarily a positional player. Suddenly I would be entering complications from move three. I would be sacrificing pawns voluntarily. I would be playing positions where initiative and intuition mattered more than structural soundness.
And I was prepared to suffer for it.
The first surprise of the season was how uncomfortable many opponents became almost immediately. Even strong players often spent huge amounts of time in the opening trying to navigate unfamiliar positions. Again and again, I found opponents burning half their clock in the first ten moves while I played quickly and confidently from preparation.
In one early Central London League game, playing the Albin Countergambit against a fellow Hammer representing Pimlico, I found myself a pawn down but with active pieces and attacking chances everywhere. Replay the game on Lichess Those positions may not satisfy an engine, but they are tremendous fun to play.
The experiment became particularly interesting during a tournament in Bavaria. After three rounds I unexpectedly found myself on 3/3 in a field packed with titled players — the only untitled player near the top boards. Hammersmith appeared beside my name on the live standings, which pleased me greatly.
More importantly, the gambits were working.
The King’s Gambit in particular produced remarkably practical results. Even experienced players seemed uncomfortable facing it over the board. Sometimes they knew the theory perfectly well but still struggled once the game moved beyond memorisation. Again and again I discovered that understanding the resulting positions mattered more than remembering exact moves.
Not every lesson was positive.
More than once I achieved excellent positions, only to continue playing “street fighting chess” when the position actually demanded simplification and restraint. Switching mentally from attack to technique proved surprisingly difficult.
I also discovered that blitz is not especially useful for learning tactical openings. Blitz games reveal what opponents are likely to play, but they often descend into chaos before deeper positional questions emerge. Rapid and classical games taught me far more about the strengths and weaknesses of the gambits.
There were painful defeats too. In one game I spent two and a half hours enjoying a beautiful attacking position before collapsing completely in the final fifteen minutes. Another time I faced the famous Fischer treatment against the King’s Gambit and found myself in a 73-move battle full of mutual blunders and changing fortunes.
But even those games were strangely enjoyable.
That, perhaps, was the greatest surprise of the season.
At the end of it all, my ECF rating had fallen slightly, but my FIDE rating had risen significantly — particularly in longer time controls, where the additional thinking time seemed to help my tactical approach. More importantly, I felt that my overall chess had improved. The tactical training required for gambit play sharpened areas of my game far beyond the openings themselves.
And there was another unexpected benefit.
At an age when many players simplify their chess and narrow their ambitions, I had deliberately thrown myself into complications, uncertainty and risk. Far from being exhausting, it felt rejuvenating. Gambiteering, I discovered, may be the chess equivalent of anti-ageing therapy.
Will I continue next season? Almost certainly — though perhaps with new openings and new experiments.
But one thing is clear. The spirit of the romantic era still has something to teach us.
And sometimes, the best way to improve at chess is simply to make the game enjoyable again.
