Two for the price of one

The standard Scandi (2 ... Qxd5) has been going well for me but I wanted to try something a bit more ambitious so got David Smerdon's excellent book on the gambit version 2 ... Nf6 etc ("Smerdon's Scandinavian: A complete attacking repertoire for Black after 1e4 d5"). The idea is that Black gives up a pawn for excellent development and tactical opportunities, and if White resolutely declines the offer (which happens quite often) then Black can play Nxd5 with an improved version of the standard lines as their N is in a good square and Q is not exposed. There are however a lot of lines and I haven't yet played it in serious live OTB but only in daily chess where the book is readily to hand!

By chance, I recently started two games (well, two matches - 4 games in total) against the same player on the same day, with both of us playing for two different teams in different competitions. Given that coincidence, perhaps it's not so surprising that we played the same 15 moves in both the games where I was black.

These games both followed a game in Smerdon's book, S.Movsesian-R.Damaso 1997, for the first 13 moves. Here's the first:

I hadn't wanted to waste an opportunity to practice the opening so managed to separate out the games temporally, by moving much faster in one than the other. Here is the second:

All in all, a fun couple of games and there's a lot to think about in these lines! Worth bearing in mind that even Grandmasters are fallible on occasion. I was pleased with myself for seeing the improvement 18 ... Ng4+ which seems better than Qe7+, even if I couldn't quite follow it up.