English Chess Forum

We are probably used to chess.com claiming names for openings that no-one has ever heard of.

Am playing in a county match for Berkshire and as White the game has started with a Borg Defence

1. d4 h6 2. e4 g5 3.h4 g4 4. Nc3 etc

Apparently 3...g4 is called the Troon Gambit.

Anyone know the background to this?

3...g4 is the main move in the position.

Oldest game in ChessBase's 2025 Mega database:

[Event "SCO-ch"]
[Site "Troon"]
[Date "1986.??.??"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Giulian, Philip Maurice"]
[Black "Basman, Michael J"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B00"]
[WhiteElo "2225"]
[BlackElo "2395"]
[PlyCount "42"]
[EventDate "1986.07.??"]
[EventType "swiss"]
[EventRounds "9"]
[EventCountry "SCO"]
[Source "ChessBase"]
[SourceDate "2001.11.25"]

1. d4 h6 2. e4 g5 3. h4 g4 4. Qxg4 d5 5. Qe2 dxe4 6. Qxe4 Nf6 7. Qd3 Nc6 8. c3
Qd5 9. Nf3 Rg8 10. Nbd2 Bg4 11. Nc4 O-O-O 12. Ne3 Qd6 13. Nxg4 Nxg4 14. Qf5+
Kb8 15. Bf4 e5 16. Nxe5 Nxd4 17. Nxg4 Nc2+ 18. Qxc2 Qxf4 19. Ne3 Bc5 20. g3
Rxg3 21. fxg3 Qxe3+ 0-1

Tim Spanton wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 29, 2025 5:53 pm

3...g4 is the main move in the position.

Oldest game in ChessBase's 2025 Mega database:

[Event "SCO-ch"]
[Site "Troon"]
[Date "1986.??.??"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Giulian, Philip Maurice"]
[Black "Basman, Michael J"]
[Result "0-1"]

A Basman game. Who else?

And Mike was prone to inventing his own nomenclature for opening variations!

Yes, but chess.com renames existing lines that have been around for decades, and in at least one case over a century.

Basman at least assigned names to openings that didn't, as far as I know (although I'm waiting to be debunked!), already have them.