The Smith-Morra Gambit is one of the few romantic openings that has seemingly withstood the test of time. Although many people have tried to refute it in the past and even published books about it, there always seemed to be some hidden concept or variation that White could use to continue fighting for an advantage. In this blog post, we'll take a look at one of the most recent attempts at a refutation, a Chessable course published in 2019 called "Mop Up The Morra", and see why it ultimately fails and what the author missed.
The claim
In 2012, IM Marc Esserman published his book Mayhem In The Morra, which contains many sharp yet sound lines on how to play the gambit. Reffering to this book the author of the "refutation" writes the following sentence in their course introduction:
However, in Mop Up the Morra, Logozar's research attempts to prove a Black advantage against all the Mayhem author's recommended lines.
Quite an interesting attempt, isn't it?
The "refutation"
The so-called "refutation" is nothing more than a slightly modified version of one of Black's main defenses. Let's call it the "Accelerated Nge7 System"...
https://lichess.org/study/X8no0B9Z/CdLJSWv4#14
The usually required move 6...a6 is just left out and instead Black hurries to develop his knight, bringing White into a forced variation which ends with a slight advantage for Black.
So how do we combat this system?
Searching for the truth
One flaw in this system is that it relies on White playing 7.Bg5?!, which is really just a dubious move. What we do instead is after 6...Nge7 play 7. 0-0:
giving Black the opportunity to play 7...a6, transposing back into well-known territory OR
giving Black the hope of gaining some quick development with 7...Ng6 and then attack him with 8. h4! which objectively leads to an equal position, but offers White a clear initiative in my opinion
I'll give the following Lichess study for further analysis before concluding this blog post...
https://lichess.org/study/X8no0B9Z/P0BOtpmc#13
Conclusion
With the Black king in the center of the board and a nice position for White, I will conclude this blog post once and for all. Feel free to ask questions or share some interesting variations based on my shared study in the comments of this blog post.
Thanks for reading all the way through and remember:
If, in the future, a chess authority announces the destruction of the Morra Gambit, I would caution skepticism. Likely the counter-refutation will lie just a move or two beyond the horizon.
