Brilliant Vienna Gambit! (my subscriber goes Super Saiyan!)
#ViennaGame
Recently, one of my subscribers (@yosoyfood) contacted me on chess.com saying that they enjoyed my content, and we played a 30-min rapid game of the Vienna Game Main Line. This was a wild and exciting game as I carelessly blundered a piece in the opening, and afterwards, we were both scrambling to gain or regain an advantage! I’ll discuss this game later.
Game 1: https://www.chess.com/game/live/53976549565
A few days afterwards, yosoyfood sent me a game they had just played where they used a bishop to f7 sacrifice in the Vienna Gambit, that was one of the tactics seen in “Double Brilliant Line in the Vienna Gambit” video. When I reviewed this game, I was blown away! It contained a consecutive double brilliant sacrifice – a beautiful and devastating manoeuvre!
The chess.com “Game Review” shows how remarkable this game was. My subscriber played at 93.1% accuracy, and apart from one mistake and book moves, all moves were either best moves, great moves, or brilliancies! You can see where they levelled up and went Super Saiyan: move 8 – brilliant, move 9 – brilliant, move 10 – great move, move 11 – great move!
The first brilliant move (8. Bxf4) sacrifices the knight on f3, but in doing so, gains a tempo and opens the king-side access to both bishops and the queen, and takes advantage of White’s massive advantage in development. The second brilliant move (9. Bxf7+) removes the f-pawn what is practically the last line of defence for the Black king (the e- and g-pawns had long wandered away) and pulls the king out forward. The opponent resigned on move 13, which is a bit of a shame. They had only one forced move, Ke6, and my subscriber would have finished this amazing game with a fitting pawn checkmate with d5!
Game 2: https://www.chess.com/game/live/53575770997
Now luckily for me, the game I played with my subscriber a few days earlier didn’t involve the humiliation of being crushed in this fashion. They had the White pieces and opened with the Vienna Game (1. e4 e5 2. Nc3). I obliged with the Falkbeer (2… Nf6), my subscriber played the Vienna Gambit (3. f4), and I played the only good response to the Vienna Gambit (3… d5) and we entered the Vienna Game Main Line.
My subscriber didn’t respond with the optimal next few moves, and I realised that they were likely unfamiliar with the Main Line. This is common at the beginner-intermediate level as the Main Line is quite uncommonly reached from the Vienna Gambit. I decided to play aggressively, and on reflection, too carelessly, and blundered on move 6 with an immediate aggressive attack on my opponent’s misplaced queen on f3 (6… Bg4).
Down a pawn, my goal was to try to finish development, consolidate, and find an attack. I thought I had this with a knight and queen combination against the White king on move 15. Stockfish evaluation agreed – that I was winning at around [-6]. However, my subscriber found a very clever counterattack, and after a trade of queens, we entered the late middle game still down a pawn with my subscriber winning at [+3]. At this point, we each had both rooks, and a dark square bishop.
At this point, I suspect that my subscriber and I had slightly different strategic approaches. They used their moves to push pawns. On the other hand, I aimed to develop my rooks and infiltrate them to the second rank. Keeping the rooks on light squares made them immune to my subscriber’s bishop, and when both rooks were on my opponent’s second rank, this represented an impenetrable forcefield to the opponent’s king, which was still on its home rank. A couple of mistakes later, my subscriber lost their bishop without compensation, and we entered an endgame where I had rook and bishop, against my opponent’s rook. There was some shuffling, and my subscriber resigned on move 46 as their rook was passively stuck guarding their remaining pawn and only hope, their king was cut-off from the other pieces, and I could now leisurely advance my four passed pawns.
