2 x TRAPS for FUN CHESS! ⚡ Quick Wins #109

#traps #tactics #romanticstyle #quickwins 

Another week, another chess noob Quick Wins article and video! And today, I’m going to show two games that follow the same theme: aggressive, unsound, Romantic attacks in the early stages of the game, factoring in a psychological approach, to coax our opponent into blundering into our trap! These are tactics that may lead you to lose as often as win, but they are fun to play! 🤩👍

So, let’s begin!

Game 1: Misdirection – leading your opponent down the garden path!

In the first game, my opponent had the black pieces and attempted a Sicilian Defense (1. e4 c5), to which I responded with the Smith-Morra Gambit (2. d4) – check out my channel playlist which currently has 33 videos! I love the Smith-Morra as it is forcing: the only accurate path is for Black to Accept, and this tends to pull the game down lines that are not very Sicilian-ish. However, in this game, Black hesitated and then played (2… b6?). How can we interpret this?

My intuition immediately is that this means that Black is probably a beginner player. They did not feel confident to capture but felt they had to defend their c-pawn. Ah ha! This is an opportunity to play in an aggressive Romantic style in the opening!

A way to do this is to not immediately “cash out” the advantage. For instance, on turn 3, White can hold their evaluation advantage with d5 or dxc5, which Stockfish recommends. Instead, we want to strike with a killer blow, not just to drag the advantage into the middlegame! So, we need to foment a plan for attack, and commit to it, and even an unsound one can work (though we should aim for solid ones first!).

The opponent’s f7 or f2 square is often a great opening target. It is uniquely weak in that it only has the king as a defender in the opening stages. Importantly, this can be threatened by our own king’s knight and king’s bishop with “normal” developing moves. Why is this important? Firstly, developing these pieces is rarely “wrong”, even if they are not the most accurate moves, and even if the position evolves such that an opening attack isn’t wise or possible. Secondly, with it no longer being very “normal” to play in the Romantic style, the opponent can be lulled into a complacent mood and not realise that an attack is coming!

My next two moves: (3. Nf3?!) and (4. Bc4!?). Stockfish considers that both are inaccurate, but I’m still ahead evaluation-wise, and much further ahead on development!

On turn 4, Black makes a blunder with (4… Bg4??). Can you see why?

Here, White can “cash out” with an unpinning tactic that starts with an ostensible bishop sacrifice (5. Bxf7+!!), check! Once again, the weak f-square! After (5… Kxf7) we unpin our knight with check (6. Ng5+!), and regardless of Black’s response their bishop is cleanly lost the next turn (7. Qxg4)!

However, there is another opportunity here! The structure is somewhat analogous to the von Hennig Gambit against the Caro-Kann Defense, within which there is a brilliant 8-move checkmate line! In fact, I describe this line in depth in the second chapter of my book, Become a Chess Assassin! (check it out: USD $15.99 at Amazon).

Notice, if Black allows our knight onto the e5 square, then Bxf7 would not just be check, but checkmate! So, the question is, “how do we move our knight there, without our opponent smelling a rat?”. If we immediately played (5. Ne5??), Black will naturally ask themselves, why did White just play that move? The move doesn’t seem to make sense. The only way we will win is if Black’s material greed, seeing the “hanging” queen, overrides their natural curiosity that can be expected from an opponent’s irrational move.

Instead, we need to lead our opponent down the garden path. Psychologically, we need them to tell themselves an explanatory story that is of our convenience, to assuage suspicion. One of the best ways to do this is to seemingly blunder against a tactic that they had set!

In this game, I played (5. e5!?) to tempt (5… dxe5), a logical looking move! For Black, it seems like both ways that I could recapture, with Nxe5 or dxe5 is problematic as both pieces are pinned to my queen! However, it’s all a ruse! I of course played (5. Nxe5!!). Superficially, the knight has a reason to go to that square; it’s recapturing and so Black’s intuition is that I’ve made a mistake! I “forgot” that the knight was pinned. Black gleefully took my queen (6… Bxd1??). I could imagine their elation… and then confusion, and then dismay as immediately after their move, I struck with (7. Bxf7#)! 😏

💡 Psychological tactics require the empathy and creativity to predict and manipulate how our opponents will interpret and understand our moves!

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Game 2: Structural traps exploit lapses in continuity

In the second game, I had the Black pieces, and White led with a Four Knights Game (boo!), and played in a solid and defensive manner. I recently remarked in my article, Get FORK-ed | First game in a month! Beating the Giuoco Pianissimo, that in these sorts of openings, “it is often better to keep things quiet and closed… [to] wait for the opponent to make the first aggressive move and then launch a counterattack”. This is the more accurate and principled approach. However, I also noted that, “sometimes, I’m in the mood to launch an immediate unbalanced attack”, and that this is “dodgy pirate chess, very unsound… but potentially super-fun”! I was in the mood for FUN! 🦜🤪🏴‍☠️

So, I decided to play a Fishing Pole Attack even though I knew that I didn’t have enough “juice” for the attack to work should White respond accurately. I played, (6… h5!?) to set the hook, and then (7… Ng4!?) offering the bait!

The Lichess community database gives us some quantitative insights regarding how people respond to this temptation. The top move from the position is that White captures the knight (8. hxg4?). The fascinating thing is that although White did make a mistake, Stockfish reckons that White is still a bit ahead [+0.5]. However, this is not at all reflected in the win-loss statistics. Out of almost 9,000 games from the position, Black won 84% to White 15%. This is a great example of one of the concepts that I raise in my book: although an engine might evaluate a position to be favouring one player in terms of accuracy, this does not imply that that position is necessarily better in real-life human-vs-human games!

In the game, I think White calculated that they were still okay after (8. hxg4) and they played accurately after (8… hxg4) with the forward movement (9. Ng5). We ended up trading pieces, and it seemed that White navigated to avoid my queen and rook to form a battery on the h-file. Stockfish rated the evaluation as equal at the end of turn 11 [0.00]. However, notice the position after (12… Nd4!).

White has two structural weaknesses: the bare open h-file, and the e2-square defended only by their queen. With both, White must maintain continuity to prevent these weaknesses becoming fatal. Unfortunately, White might have under-appreciated the risk and went on the attack with (13. Qg4??), hitting my g5-pawn and presumably attempting to shred the defences of my king. But this was a blunder as (13… Rh4!) forces White’s queen to commit. In the position, White’s best move was to trade their queen for my rook (14. Qxh4 gxh4) or potentially retreating their queen entirely (14. Qd1). White went through with their attack and captured my g5-pawn (13. Qxg5??), but in doing so, lost sight of continuity; their queen was no longer guarding the e2-square, and their king could not step onto the h-file. Suddenly, (14… Ne2#), good game, GG!

💡 Attacks that weaken the defences of the king are often effectively traps, as they exploit lapses in continuity, something that can be difficult to maintain!

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Learn how to play the best chess opening attacks in the Romantic style with my new book, “Become a Chess Assassin!” available now on your local Amazon store!