The Danish Gambit was popular with masters of the attack including Alekhine, Marshall, Blackburne, and Mieses, but as more defensive lines for Black were discovered and improved, it lost favor in the 1920s.

This move order enables White to avoid the critical main line of the Göring Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.c3 dxc3 5.Nxc3 Bb4) by keeping open the option of meeting an early ...Bb4 by developing the king's knight to e2 rather than f3 and thus preventing Black from disrupting White's queenside pawn structure, as Alekhine did in his game against Pomar above.

Most theorists evaluate this position as equal, but some believe that the queenside majority gives Black the advantage in the endgame (Schlechter suggested 10...c5!?[5]).

[6] The popularity of the Danish plummeted after Schlechter's defense was introduced as the resulting positions are not what White generally desires from a gambit opening.

There have been attempts, especially by German correspondence player Ingo Firnhaber, to revive the gambit idea with 7.Nc3, but according to Karsten Müller and Martin Voigt in Danish Dynamite, this line gives insufficient compensation after 7...Nxd5 8.Nxd5 Nbd7 (8...c6??

The big advantage of Göring's move order (Nf3 before c3) is avoiding Schlechter's Defence, since after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.c3 dxc3 5.Bc4 cxb2 6.Bxb2 Black cannot safely play 6...d5 with the queen's knight committed to c6.

Another advantage of the Göring move order is that the computer-inspired Qe7 in response to c3 is now too slow as white can castle and achieve a pin on the queen if black proceeds the same way.

The big advantage of 2.d4 exd4 3.c3 is the option to meet 3...d5 with 4.exd5 Qxd5 5.cxd4 Nc6 6.Be3 instead of 6.Nf3 transposing to the Göring Gambit Declined (the main objection being the Capablanca Variation, 6.Nf3 Bg4 7.Be2 Bb4+ 8.Nc3 Bxf3 9.Bxf3 Qc4, when White must exchange queens or give up castling).