We've all been on both sides of this situation at one time or another. After all it's so tempting.
Our queen is one of the strongest pieces on the board. She can go anywhere and sometimes it feels like she can be invincible and take out any piece.
While that's often true later in the game, in the opening it's usually the opposite. Anytime she's threatened by a weaker piece that's protected or out of reach, she has no choice but to move out of the way; making her the weakest of all the pieces early on.
I'm going to go over a few scenarios on the wrong ways to develop a queen early and one subtlety at the end with an opening that requires an early queen (if you still feel like you need her in the beginning).
Let's take a look at what happens here.
Now this isn't absolutely horrible in terms of points but look at the development and activity of black's pieces vs white's.
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Black has a safe king and is ready for all of his pieces to be thrown into the action.
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White will have to fight tooth and nail from here to get any sort of play.
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Why?
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Because he let black chase his queen around and develop all of his pieces into the game.
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Let's look at another then we'll look at a common scenario.
Where can the black queen go? For the "most powerful piece” she seems pretty weak in this position.
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Like with most times the queen comes out early, she gets bullied around by multiple pieces and it's left with few options.
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Meanwhile, the other player has excellent piece activity, potential for piece coordination, and king safety.
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Noticing any patterns here?
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Now let's look at a very common game that requires the queen to come out early.
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The Scandanavian Defense.
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I've played this line against rapid players with 1700+ and they still fall for this line every once in a while so it can work for you too!
I know, that was fast. Take a second to look at why the queen took the bishop.
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There was nowhere else for her to go!
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If you still want to play the Scandanavian it's perfectly fine. You have to avoid this trap by making this key move though!
That's all it takes! If you put the knight on c6, you'll have to work to keep your queen alive. Moving the pawn to c6 allows your queen to retreat to d8 instead of into the middle where she can be bullied. By now we've seen that can come with some terrible costs.
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If you've ever wondered how some people can be so tricky with knights and how to cripple them with relative ease, check out my previous blog
here.
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Or check out my new series on
calculation, from opening to endgame. (New posts come out daily. Make sure to follow for updates!)
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Until next time, keep improving, keep learning, and most of all enjoy every moment!
