Chess: King's Gambit Accepted: Muzio Gambit, Wild Muzio Gambit

I played white (offence) here — 3 minutes Super Blitz at Lichess as Anonymous.

Indeed, it was wild. Muzio theatre begins.

In this, my thought was,

Oh, you're defending that f4 pawn of yours? Ah, understandable. Please do take my f3 knight. I'll take your trousers.

You can use your left and right arrows on your keyboard or use the mouse scroll to see the moves back and forth on the chessboard. But first, click the board.

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Muzio

Timeline goes as such:

• The actual line:

  1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 4.Bc4 g4 5.O-O gxf3 6.Qxf3

  was properly analysed by Giulio Cesare Polerio in the late 1500s.

• The first recorded game came from Geronimo Cascio, documented in Alessandro Salvio's Il Puttino (1634).

• Then, centuries later, along came Jacob Sarratt — an English chess writer in the early 1800s, translating Salvio's work.

  And what did he do?

  He accidentally attributed the opening to Mutio d'Allesandro, a contemporary of Cascio, not the player of the game.

  Basically: Looks Italian. Must be Mutio's. 🤦

  Mutio d'Allesandro was a fellow of the same time period as Cascio — but he's been wrongly credited for the opening Cascio actually played, thanks to Sarratt's confused attribution.

• From there, the name Muzio Gambit stuck.