I Played Three Brilliant Moves in One (blitz) Game!!!
Hi chess lovers! Have you ever played a brilliant move in a game? I've had beginners tell me they have yet to play a brilliant move. However, I believe if you do some digging, you've probably played a brilliant move at some point or another. From my understanding, most sacrifices (even basic ones, like sacrificing a Queen for back rank checkmate) constitute a brilliancy by Chess.com's standards. So if you have decent tactical awareness and play a lot, you probably have played a brilliant move at some point or another. 
I don't religiously put all of my games through game review (I probably should). So I may have accomplished this feat before... I recently played a blitz (3|0) game in which I played three brilliant moves... that's one brilliancy per minute!!! (OK, brilliant joke Daniel 
). Was it my proudest game? Absolutely not. However, I thought it was somewhat cool.
I will note that when I initially plugged it into the game report, it showed three. However, I reloaded the game into the game report for this blog, and it only gave me two 
The "brilliancy" that they took away is only a "good" move. Booooo!!! But whatever. Also, I will disclaim that a brilliancy only goes as far as the follow-up. Here's an example of a relatively recent rapid game I played, where I found the brilliant move, but didn't follow up correctly (play better than I did!)
Alright, let's look at these brilliancies! I'm going to include screenshots of the positions (rather than a puzzle format) as to encourage readers to visualize. If you want to run through variations, I will attach the game at the end of this post. I'll be commentating on the positions right after the screenshot, so if you want to solve it, make sure to hide the text!
BRILLIANCY #1
Black to play. Black is up a piece, so the position is already good. I found the move 17... Nxg3!! If White doesn't take (which they didn't... they played 18. Bxg6+, which I admittedly missed, but after 18... Kh8, I'm fine), Black just snagged a White Kingside pawn, Knight on g3 is on a rampage, etc. The point of the sacrifice is actually simple. If Kxg3, Qg5+, and Black wins the piece back. Either King steps on the f-file, in which Rxf4 is crushing, or Kh2... in which Rxf4 is also crushing!
BRILLIANCY #2:
This was only two moves later. This one is a little more murky, and actually the brilliancy Chess.com docked from me. I played 19... Rxf4!! Apparently, after Rxf4, Ne5 is crushing for Black. My point was that I am already up a ton of material, and I thought the Knight on f4 could be super annoying, so I just thought "chop it off". I did mess up the follow-up, I'll include it in the game I link at the end.
BRILLIANCY #3:
With less than a minute on my clock, I played 26... Bxg4!! Now my planned follow-up was apparently not great. If 27. Rxa8, I think I was gonna play 27... Qh3+, and see what happens. It turns out that if that variation had happened, I would have had to find 27... Ne2!! to be completely winning. The deadly threat is Qg3+, with mate to come. However, I will say, in a blitz game with like 30 seconds to defend with no increment, it would have taken a madman to defend with 15 points of material all surrounding the King. Chess is so fascinating.
I attached the game with brief annotations.
Well, that's about it... chess is an intriguing game! Let me know what I should blog about in the future, I enjoy writing, but sometimes run out of topics. Some ideas include breaking down a puzzle (which I did in the past, and was a hit), analyzing reader's games, old tournament games/stories, etc. Let me know what you want to hear about.
Otherwise, peace out, see you for the next post!
