My Chess Games 02: Scotch Adventure
Not sure whether my fascination with Scotch opening started as a just defense against Ruy Lopez or Italian - since everybody seemed well-prepared in those openings, or failure in crazy gambits such as Danish Gambit, but Gary Kasparov's world championship match against Anatoly Karpov was definitely the most important reason.
I know many consider it a dull and drawish opening, but I've been using it as one of my main opening tools and it probably has brought the most success for me compared to the other openings (probably one of the few openings that I have a plus score!). Even on chess.com I hold a 59% win with it!
And some of the games ended pretty quickly, like this one:
And here's another quick win:
Not that often that I face the Steinitz variation (4. ..Qh4) and because of that I normally have a hard time remembering the order of the moves over the board.
As Paul van der Sterren puts it in his book FCO: Fundamental Chess Opening:
"White is practically forced to sacrifice his e-pawn (which implies that the Scotch is really a gambit!), yet by doing so he obtains a truly dangerous initiative."
I messed up playing this variation a couple of times and lost miserably, so nowadays before every tournament I check some continuations in this variation just to make sure I'll remember them when the time comes!
One of the funniest positions in Scotch - which I've seen a few times in fast games - happens after black plays 5. ..d6 in the Classical Variation - an inaccuracy, (which unlike the natural looking blunder 5. ..Nf6 - which black loses the DSB after 6. Nxc6 - keeps the DSB defended!). Black ends up with an awkward tripled-pawn in the c-file and will be the underdog in a quickly-reached endgame:
Here's a game I played in a blitz game here on chess.com:
