How To Play The Marshall Attack, Part I

In this series I will try to give you an idea of how to play the Marshall Attack from black’s perspective. The Marshall Attack, which is in fact a gambit, is a very good black weapon against the Ruy Lopez and I plan to show you how to handle the most common white ways of defending against it…

The attack, or gambit if you like, was invented by Frank Marshall in the early 1900’s. He had tried it out in a few games before playing it against Capablanca in 1918. Marshall eventually lost the game against the world champion, but the idea was born and has developed in the last 90 years, making it one of the important contributions to chess opening theory. And easily one of the most analyzed, too.

The Marshall attack has been, and still is, played on the very highest levels. including World Championship matches. It’s soundness is perhaps debatable, but in any case it’s a very dangerous weapon which offers excellent practical chances against almost all levels of players.

In this part I will discuss the main strategic ideas behind the gambit, both accepted and declined .
Let’s look at the opening moves of the Marshall Attack:

C89:
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 0-0 8.c3 d5

What is the idea of 8…d5!? which is sacrificing a pawn?
Well, basically black claims that 8.c3 was a positional mistake. Black believes that if white takes the pawn (9.exd5 Nxd5 10.Nxe5 Nxe5 11.Rxe5) he will have very promising attacking chances on the kingside because all the white queenside pieces are very immobile.

White Accepting The Gambit
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 0-0 8.c3 d5 9.exd5 Nxd5 10.Nxe5 Nxe5 11.Rxe5

The c3 pawn is blocking the development of Nb1 and Bc1 has to wait for the d-pawn to move forward before it comes into play. White is virtually without any defenders of the kingside at this moment.

Blacks plan is very clear. He wants to position his pieces for a kingside attack and force white to create weaknesses around his king. Black almost certainly has a longlasting attack on the white king. Depending on white reactions he will play moves like Bd6, Qh4, Bf5/g4, Ra8-e8-e6, Nd5-f6-g5. All black pieces awill participate in the attack, but of course white is not without chances if he defends very accurately.
As you can read from the above, the Marshall Attack is a positionally based gambit. Black gives a pawn in exchange for very active pieces and a long lasting attack on the kingside.

White’s goal is to activate the queenside pieces while defending against black’s attack, hoping to survive to be able to enter an endgame with a pawn in hand.
Developing moves like Be3, Nd2 and often a4 to activate the rook are very normal. The queen almost always goes to f1 to help defending. Sometimes via d3 other times directly from d1.

This setup is the main line and will be discussed in detail in Part II of this series

White Declining The Gambit

There are several ways of declining the gambit for white. The most popular ways are 9.d4 or 9.d3
White accepts that taking the pawn is too risky and concentrates on developing his queenside pieces instead. This is leading to position types very different from the ones where white accepts the gambit.
Now black cannot expect to attack kingside. He will have to play a more positional game and probably go for queenside operations instead.
This may be bad news for a dedicated Marshall Attack player, but at least the good news are that he is not a pawn down…

Part III will take a closer look at possible black plans should white decline the gambit.

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