Daring Sacrifice Refutes FIVE Queen Moves! | 100+ Modern Masterpieces

It is one of the oldest chess prohibitions—and also one of the most frequently broken: Don't bring your queen out too early!

The reason for its frequent breakage is clear. The queen is the most powerful piece—why shouldn't I use it as early and aggressively as possible?!

The most commonly cited reason not to bring out the queen is because, as such a valuable piece, she must flee from all irritating and harassing attacks by lesser piece. Your opponent can use these attacks to develop pieces with a gain of time while your queen scurries away in embarrassing retreats.

This is absolutely true, but there are a couple of other reasons to consider. One is that the queen can end up trapped in front of it's pawn. As many moves as the queen has, she can run out of safe ones, and many queens have been trapped early in the game.

The other reason to be patient in bringing out the queen is simply that there are better things to do! Your bishops, knights, and pawns all need to move out from the back rank to begin impacting the game early. Your king will quickly come under fire and should castle. Meanwhile, your queens and rooks benefit little from early development. They need established space and open lines to flex their powers. They won't find that early in the game, and they can wait to take up posts until these lines exist.

100+ Modern Masterpieces Guaranteed To Improve Your Chess: The Opening

1. Almasi Crushes The Center - Modern Masterpieces: Control The Center
2. The Greatest Blitz Game Ever! - Modern Masterpieces: Develop Your Pieces
3. The Big Greek Immortal - Modern Masterpieces: Don't Push Too Many Pawns In The Opening
4. 3 Vicious Brilliant Moves - Modern Masterpieces: Don't Move Pieces Twice In The Opening
5. Five Queen Moves Refuted - Modern Masterpieces: Don't Bring Your Queen Out Too Early

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Today's game features delightfully audacious play from the creative Armenian IM Ashot Nadanian. 

After employing the daring Shara-Von Hennig Gambit, Nadanian manages to win inordinate time driving his opponent Indonesian FM Prayitno's queen up and down the d-file. Nadanian uses this time to complete development and then to sacrifice a piece to gain an unopposed dark-squared bishop on the e1-a5 diagonal.

The sacrifice is objectively unclear, but it's practically almost impossible to find a defense, and in the game, Nadanian rolls through White's position in smashing fashion.