The Craziest Queen Moves Ever
First of all I would like to thank our readers for their contribution to last week's article. Many of you shared your chess knowledge and helped to uncover some little-known games with really stunning moves. Since in that article we investigated the craziest king moves ever played, it is only natural to continue our journey to find out what were the craziest queen moves ever.
Again we follow the same guideline as before: the queen moves should be legal, good and crazy!
Therefore, some great candidates get eliminated.
For example, look at the next diagram:
White is threatening a checkmate in one move: 34. Qg7. Many of you would probably play 33...Nf5 guarding the vital g7 square. The ever creative GM Ivanchuk found the way to both stop the checkmate and bring his queen to the defense.
So, he played 33...Qa3-g4!! This move would have been the best defensive move ever if it hadn't been illegal!
When Ivanchuk realized his mistake he apologized and resigned the game.
Another great, crazy queen move was played by Alekhine in the next game:
It is one of those brilliant Alekhine sacrifices, right? Wrong, it is just a pure blunder. Notice that the game was played in a blindfold simul and that explains such an unusual blunder.
Now let's talk about really crazy queen moves that are both legal and strong! It is difficult to beat the following "golden oldie," which most of you have probably seen thousand of times. For our less experienced readers, who have never seen this game, try to find Black's move in the next position:
In my opinion, the next modern game can come close to the shocking value of the move. It is not every day you see forks like this.
Yes, Ivanchuk indeed knows how make crazy queen moves! Look at the following game:
Please note, that while in most of the cases a crazy queen move means a sacrifice, it should be a shocking, not obvious sacrifice. Therefore, as much as I like the next Morphy move, it is too obvious to call it crazy.
The queen cannot be taken due to a checkmate in one move!
The next queen sac might be not that difficult to calculate either, but it looks absolutely astonishing because Black captures White's queen and delivers a check!
Now try to find the best move in the following position:
If Black's crazy queen move in the previous game had a goal of protecting the b2 pawn and winning the game, the next game shows a crazy move with the modest intention of creating a fortress in an inferior position:
If you ask me to choose the "craziest queen move ever," I am not going to hesitate with my answer. I don't think any other chess move made such a strong impression on me. We did our investigation about this mysterious game in this article.
So, try to find one of the craziest moves in chess history!
What are your favorite crazy queen moves?
