2 Games 2 Blunders! Don’t do this in the Vienna Game!
#ViennaGame
The Vienna Game is an excellent opening for White. However, like all openings, a careless move can be disastrous. Recently, I played a couple of games against an opponent in a round in a Team Australia tournament where we both used the Vienna Game opening. And in both games, we both make what were pretty much game-ending mistakes in the opening.
In the first game, my opponent with White playing the Vienna Game, played a very unusual move (3. g4). This move immediately gives an advantage to Black, but not yet game ending. The Mieses Variation of the Vienna Game (3. g3) is a solid opening, with the plan to fianchetto the king’s bishop. The critical mistake came later. I took the opportunity to take the full centre (3… d5) and after a pawn exchange and recapture with the queen, my opponent lost sight of the fact that he now had an open diagonal to his king’s rook. So, on move 6, I captured my opponent’s rook with queen, and they have no compensation with the evaluation favouring Black at -9!
In the second game, I played with White and the Vienna Game, and we went down the Max Lange Defense Line. My mistake, however, is that I couldn’t quite remember all the ideas after my opponent’s “desperate” attempt to set up an attack with advancing their knight (6… Ng4). I got the first part right, advancing my f-pawn (7. f5) which sets up a massive pawn chain controlling the centre and cuts off the bishop’s defence of the knight on g4. Basically, this is “closing the fence” on the knight, which is why the knight advance is bad. If you look at Stockfish’s recommendation for the best next move for Black, it is immediately withdrawing the knight back from the attack. However, I then forgot that I needed to defend against Qh4+ and foolishly immediately attacked the knight with a pawn. Checkmate came two moves later!
