If you play it
This one is worth saying plainly: the opening does not give you enough for the pawn once the trap is declined. Low accuracy here is often the position, not you.
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Englund Gambit
Played by BlackA gambit against the d-pawn that is not objectively sound. It works on the trap: if the opponent declines it, Black is simply worse with less material.
From 2,242 games by 524 Chess.com players of every level, September 2026.
Black's score with the Englund Gambit, by rating
- Under 100049.6% ±3.8
In line with Black's average at this level (48.2%). 660 games by 194 players · 4.1% draws
- 1000–139949.3% ±7.9
In line with Black's average at this level (47.6%). 152 games by 38 players · 5.3% draws
- 1400–179945.4% ±11.2
In line with Black's average at this level (48.6%). 76 games by 19 players · 1.3% draws
- 1800+6 players · not enough games to judge yet
The marker on each bar is Black's average score across all openings at that rating and time control. We only call an opening above or below that average when the gap is far beyond the margin (±) — about 1.7 times it — because we compare dozens of openings at once, and chance alone would make a few of them look special.
The typical mistake
If you face it
Declining the trap leaves you a pawn up in a sound position, and the hard part is the first few moves rather than the rest. Grabbing material greedily beyond that is where this gambit actually scores.
Most played lines
- Englund Gambit98.3% of the sample's games in this opening
- Englund Gambit Mosquito Gambit1.1% of the sample's games in this opening
- Englund Gambit Stockholm Variation0.5% of the sample's games in this opening
Each line opens its theory page on Chess.com.
How do you score with the Englund Gambit?
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How these numbers are made
Every week we draw about 1,008 Chess.com players at random from the public player lists of twelve countries, never one already drawn in the previous weeks, and read their rated games from the last complete month. These numbers add up the latest 2 weekly samples: 2,016 players, 1,382 of whom played in September 2026. A game counts once even if both players are in the sample, and no single player can add more than 10 games to the same opening and time control, so one enthusiast cannot tilt the numbers. Rating bands use the average rating of the two players in that time control, because ratings are not comparable between blitz and rapid. Bands with fewer than 40 games or 10 players are shown but not judged. The score counts a draw as half a point. The ± is a 95% margin, but a gap is only judged beyond 3.3 standard errors: with many openings compared at once, a looser line would flag openings by pure chance. Players on this site are never part of the sample.