ICBM Gambit

Submission 3,959

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About

ICBM Gambit or Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Gambit is a chess gambit and a meme in the chess community. The gambit is a variation of the Tennison gambit and involves the white player sacrificing several pieces to "launch" their queen across the board, taking the other player's queen and gaining strategic advantage.

Origin

On October 11th, 2020, the YouTube^[1] channel Bosnian Ape Society uploaded a 3D-animated video titled "Tennison Gambit Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Variation" in which they humorously presented a version of the Tennison Gambit that involves the white player sacrificing several pieces before taking the other player's queen from across the board, applying pressure to several of their opponent's pieces at once. The video (shown below) received over 7.4 million views in three years.

e4 d5
Nf3 dxe4
Ng5 Nf6
d3 exd3
Bxd3 h6
Nxf7 Kxf7
Bg6+ Kxg6
Qxd8

Spread

On December 5th, 2020, YouTuber^[2] GothamChess posted a video about the gambit, explaining it's played and offering an additional variation of it. The video (shown below) received over 4 million views in three years.

On August 7th, 2021, Bosnian Ape Society uploaded^[3] another video about the gambit, describing a "submarine" variation of the ICBM gambit. The upload (shown below) garnered over 1.8 million views in two years.

The viral uploads by Bosnian Ape Society and GothamChess helped popularize the gambit in chess communities online, such as the /r/Chess and /r/AnarchyChess subreddits. On May 11th, 2021, Chess.com^[4] user epicNeev_1234 made a thread about the gambit that received over 30 replies in two years.

More humorous videos about the gambit also appeared on YouTube. For example, on June 28th, 2023, the YouTube^[5] channel ChessPage1 published a video that gained over 426,000 views in one month.