Middlegame Traps Setting
Greetings, everyone. Thank you for reading what I hope will be the first of many blog posts I plan to write here. You will find analysis of games here, pinpointing the most important moves in each of them, all with a detailed explanation.
I hope this is going to improve your pattern spotting in your games, although it takes a large amount of traning. I strongly encourage you to solve Puzzles, since it's going to improve your pattern finding skills considerably.
Middlegame Traps
Today's blog is going to focus on the idea of setting traps in the middlegame. As I'm sure most of you know, traps are set primarily in the opening, especially if your opponent is unfamiliar with it. For example, Stafford's Gambit is full of traps and many players have made mistakes in it that led to quick defeat. However, traps can be set even after the opening is resolved. If the opponent is not careful, and especially if he is in time trouble, he can easily fall into one of these.
Therefore, if you do not see any possibility for a better attack or if you're down on material or clock and you have the opportunity, resort to setting a trap. You never know when it might work. And even if it doesn't, your opponent will at least burn some clock trying to figure out how to get out of your trap in the best way possible.
Let me show you some examples from my games where the trap worked and gave me a material advantage or a direct win.
Example 1: Pin
This position is from a 5|0 blitz game. At the moment I am a pawn down after a miscalculated exchange.
I set a trap with 1. Ncd5. The correct response to this is 1... Bxd5 2. Nxd5 Rxd5 3. Rxd5 Nxd5 4. Qxd5 Bxb7. After these exchanges, Black will maintain and actually increase the material advantage and probably win the game. However, in what I believe was rush to keep the clock equal, Black immediatelly played 1... Nxd5 instead, overlooking the fact that this is a wrong move order. After 2. Qxe7, Black realised it and resigned. 2... Nxe7 doesn't save him, because the knight is now pinned to the d8 rook and Black is going to end up a full piece down and with an annoying pin on the dark-squared bishop, while I can utilize another attacking opportunities with moves like Rb8 .
Example 2: Piece sacrifice
Personally, I think this is one of the nicest combinations I've played. It was played in a 3|0 blitz. At first, it may seem like I made a big mistake with this move and I fell into a fork from a pawn.
Of course, to 1... Qg4, White responds with 2. f3. Now, probably the most natural way out of this would be pinning the pawn with 2... Rf8, but after that, White can force me into a queen trade with 3. Kg1 Rd4 4. Qxh6+ gxh6 5. fxg4, after which the position is almost equal. Black still holds a small advantage in this line according to Stockfish but probably not significant enough to convert it into a win on its own.
However, I have noticed a nice tactic instead and played 2. Qg6. White of course naturally took on e4, but I had a way to immediatelly get the sacrificed rook back: 3...Qf6+. This attacks both the king and the rook on a1 and after 4. Qf2 Qxa1+ 5. Qe1 Qxe1+ 6. Kxe1 I collect the e4 pawn with another check. By seemingly falling into an obvious fork and sacking the rook instead of pinning the attacking pawn, I gained a bigger advantage. I almost dropped it later, but in a rook endgame, my opponent fell into another trap, this time a "poisoned pawn" type, ending in a king-rook skewer. I won't show that one here though because it's pretty obvious, but as I said, in time trouble, anything might happen and I fall into these kinds of traps or blunders myself pretty often.
Thank you once again for reading this post. You can expect another thematic post as soon as I collect enough example positions to analyze. See you again soon.