The Best Tactic In Chess
Everyone has a favorite chess tactic. Maybe you're a big fan of the fork. Or maybe you spend your nights vainly searching for discovered checks.
But what if I told you there was a chess tactic that never fails, succeeds way more than you'd think, and when it does work, it has the maximum possible impact on a game?
It can literally turn a loss into a win. Allow me to introduce the Super Queen's Gambit.
The SQG is a tactic that has 100 percent upside and no downside. When you are in a situation where you can play it, you always should. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
So what is it?
Imagine you're playing a chess game and everything has gone wrong. You're down several pawns, maybe an exchange, and toss a few pieces down the drain while you're at it.
Your opponent's clock is overflowing with seconds to spare. Your king is unsafe, your remaining army is woefully uncoordinated, and that resign button is starting to look awfully tempting.
Your options here are limited. If you are too stubborn to resign, you can proceed down an increasingly desperate list:
- You can try to play good chess and fight back. This phase usually does not last long.
- Next, go for some cheap tricks. Threaten an easily-defended mate-in-one. Hope your opponent doesn't know what a back rank is. If you're playing at the intermediate level or higher, these efforts are rarely fruitful.
- If you're really allergic to resignation, maybe set up a stalemate lottery ticket. Like most lottery tickets, this will probably end up in the trash. And even if it works, you've only achieved a draw. Yuck!
Now that you've exhausted those conventional options, it's time for the Super Queen's Gambit.
Many of you have probably figured out the gimmick by this point in the article. To execute a SQG, simply move your queen to check your opponent (or threaten a different piece), while at the same time lining up your queen with your opponent's queen.
The hope is that your opponent will be playing on autopilot at this point, smug and secure in his upcoming victory. He might simply move his king to a safe square, trusting you did not do something incredibly stupid like hang your queen on purpose.
Then you take his queen and you win.
There are several factors to consider when hoping to achieve a successful SQG. Here are the obvious ones:
- You must have nothing to lose in the game. If you play as well as me, this comes up all the time.
- You should be playing a blitz or bullet game. But—this is not 100 percent necessary. I have seen the SQG work in a correspondence game with a time control of three days per move! In any event, blitz chess is real chess, and I can't imagine why anyone would play a longer time control.
- Your opponent's queen must be on an undefended square. This is non-negotiable.
- Your own queen should deliver the check from an undefended square in your own camp. This is helpful to sell the illusion. You're not offering a hopeless queen trade; you are throwing in a cantankerous check before throwing in the towel. You might also add a little 10-second think before the move, to lull your opponent into further complacency.
- Your queen should be as far away on the board from your opponent's queen as reasonably possible. Studies have shown that most chess players think in chunks of the board. Most of us can't keep the entire board in our working memories, even when it's right in front of our face.
- Your brilliant SQG won't work against GM Hikaru Nakamura, or any other genius who can actually remember where the pieces are on the board. But it just might work against your opponent of similar skill as you, who has stopped calculating and started insulting your entire bloodline of ancestors in the chat because you have not yet resigned.
The SQG is clearly not a tactic you should aspire to play. By definition, you need to be losing badly to achieve it. Instead, it is the tactic your pathetic chess game deserves, but not the one it needs right now.
Have you used the Super Queen's Gambit in your own games? Let me know in the comments.
