🔥 Chessnut Air | OTB chess with friends on a relaxing evening! 🍷🥖♟️😄
#chessnutair #otb #casual #vienna
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I suspect that for most of us, chess is largely online. However, I encourage everybody to find an opportunity to play some over-the-board chess. It doesn't have to be competitive; it can simply be a few casual games for fun, and to catch up with a friend!
Today, I played a couple of casual games with my mate dr_magneto in the evening after work, at my local small bar Huelo, accompanied by a few glasses of wine and some charcuterie. I brought along my trusty Chessnut Air electronic chess board, which is nice and portable, just the right size for slightly cramped tables, and allowed me to record the game electronically with the Chessnut App in "clock mode".
In this game, I had the white pieces and played a Vienna and Black responded with (2... d6). The simplest response is to take the full centre (3. d4), and after some trades (3... exd4 4. Qxd4 Nc6 5. Qd3), I'm happy as I know that White has a small advantage. This position can be a bit tricky for Black and my mate made a mistake on move 6 with (6... Qe7?). This is often risky against the Vienna as White's queen's knight on c3 is always ready to leap to its powerful square (7. Nd5!), which now also wins tempo on Black's queen!
On move 8, I miss a very winning attack (Qc3), which threatens Black's exposed h8-rook down the open long dark square diagonal, and also places pressure on Black's c7-pawn. Instead, I played a rather speculative tricky move (8. Bg5!?). My idea was to then play Bf6, with an attack on Black's h8-rook down the same diagonal, and if Black captures the bishop with their g8-knight (Nxf6), I could then strike with my own d5-knight to recapture (Nxf6+), which would come with a very lovely royal fork!
With some wine in the system strengthening my tunnel vision (😅), I didn't see alternate better lines even though I knew that Black could refute this attack with (9... Bg7), which they found and played. No matter, I thought! I was happy to trade away some pieces as I felt that I still had the initiative, better development, and the easily forgotten attack from the d5-knight...
We trade a pair of bishops, then knights, and then the queens. And when the dust settled, my powerful knight sitting on d5 leapt forward with (14. Nxc7+), an absolute fork of the king and a8-rook! At the end of the opening/early middlegame exchange, White was up a piece and ready to castle; very winning.
The strategy from this point was to force piece trades and simplify. Black's delayed development allowed (21. Rd8), which pinned the knight to the rook on the back rank, taking away mobility of Black's remaining two pieces. A few moves later, I managed to form a rook battery along the e-file and after (26. R1xe4), my mate opted to resign from the impossible position. GG!
