Beware the Queen's Check
Beware the Queen's Check
I've been slowly trying to regain my rapid rating back up to 1700. The result has been a lot of interesting games with different results. In a recent game, I played white against a 1630 from France.
The Game
I would open with c4, the English, and black responded with c6, fighting for the d5 square, a common idea with the caro-kann setup. I develop with Nc3, and black plays Nf6. g3 to fianchetto my bishop, and black plays e6, preparing even more support for a push to d5. However, I found it interesting that black took back with the e-pawn, deciding to off-center, rather than play cxd5.
Black plays Be7, preparing to castle, and I play e3 to open a diagonal for my queen and potentially a square for my knight. Black also brings out his light square bishop to f5. I develop my second knight, which I jump to f4, after black plays Qd7, looking to trade my powerful light square bishop.
However, black plays an interesting move, with g5, kicking out my knight, but pretty much overextending his pawns on the kingside, making castling short difficult. I offer a knight trade, and we trade. After h6, I have to drop my queen back or else it gets trapped after Bg4.
Then, black plays Qe6, which is most likely just a waiting move, but it removes a defender from b7, so I play Qb3. Black responds with b6, but this is a huge mistake, can you find out why?
The engine evaluates the move Nxd5 as a brilliant move, because after the pawn captures, the rook and queen are forked. After black moves the queen, and I capture the rook, black tries to develop the knight to c6, to block the bishop, but I pin with Qb5, and black plays Bd7.
But then, I make my own blunder, with black playing the exact same fork because I capture the knight with Bxc6. But after black plays Bxc6, my queen and rook are also forked. So in the end, I was still up two pawns, although, my bishop and rook hadn't moved, and I wasn't sure castling would've been too helpful.
I play Qb7, attacking both the pawns and bishop. However, after the bishop, checks, I decide to block with the bishops, and trade my passive bishop with black's active bishop. I also quickly get my rook to an open file.
However, when black plays Qf5, I played Ke2, allowing the queen to infiltrate with Qb5+, and I make a huge blunder with Kd2. This is because after Qb2+, I have to block with the rook, or lose all my pawns. But now, I can not escape to the f3 square because the queen will fork my king and rook.
Black had been able to completely trap my king into a square, and if I tried to escape, I would've lost all my material advantage and more. Thus, the game ended in a draw.
