Blogs

Winning Patzer atack with 2..Nf6??

PeterArt
| 4

The Patzer attack starts as :

1. e4 e5
2. Qh5

My friend Wesso here at chess.com, masters the Patzer attack with great skill.
Its also called the Wayward queen attack or Parham Attack. Some might think its not a proper chess attack, but it has been played at grandmaster level tournaments (external link) so better not underestimate this valid GM opening . Wesso has studied this opening in great depth, and so he deserves respect, won countless games with it, and got my full respect about the opening ( I call it the Wesso opening). Its a neat opening i believe if you can play it.

For those who dont know the opening, some links to his blog:
(opens new window) Because they contain good examples.
http://blog.chess.com/Wesso/wayward-queen-attack-0520092
http://blog.chess.com/Wesso/wayward-queen-attack-052509
http://blog.chess.com/Wesso/patzer-opening-051509

Now this blog post is about winning from this white opening in black.
First some background, a while ago i wanted to be as good as Wesso in this opening, and so to get me there i used my computer to train myself. I use Arena (freeware) with self compiled opening books, so it sticks to certain openings (or counter play). The problem only was, Arena is much better then me and I never won these games and so I couldnt train myself into it, to become good in it.

Still however i learned something about it, how the computer responded to it. Which was really quite strange, counter intuitive not as how i normally saw people react to it. I really wondered why it behaved like that. Wikipedia explains the opening quite well. According to this Wikipedia article the common response is against it is 2...Nc6. However it seamed that some computer engines prefer the uncommon 2..Nf6??. With the little knowledge provided at Wikipedia and the games i had seen on my computer about this counter play, i began to form an idea about 2..Nf6.

2..Nf6??,   main ideas and observations:

  1. Still is risky but fends of the first strike attack by white.
  2. Black seams less forced to move itself into trouble situations.
  3. It leads to a lost pawn but a positional win (wikipedia)
  4. It tends to result in slow but strong black developmentIn fact so slow you need to play it carefully to find the right moment for a main counter attack. Since white tends to claim the board early with his queen and rules the board even more aggressive then Scandinavian openings. So black has to be very carefully to expand the small unbalance of positions to win the game. However black might find white to move a bit to wild with the queen and might be able to use that against white.
  5. Since white in patzer uses queen and knights often, it might be possible for black to develop slowly and take one of these attackers.
  6. Black should above all be defensive playing until it can attack dont attempt plans play on how white moves, as there isnt much time to develop great pawn structures etc, the white play uses momentum a lot (as a good attack always does). Whenever white looses momentem black should wonder if its time to fully attack or wait a little bit longer.


Bellow is the game which i have fully commented.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BTW while i played this game, Wesso played 10 other games online
So me winning a single game, isnt as great as playing so many games at once.
Altough i won, i respect Wesso as friend and good chess player and also respect to people who win using patzer opening it isnt a bad opening, lit is less popular maybe but those things can change over time, as in 2005 it was played in a GM Tournement. Oh well who ever considered seriously the Ruy Lopez opening before Boby Fisher made use of it. I'm not sure whats most popular today but wouldnt it be nice to play and win using less popular ones, by realy understanding each move.