Englund Gambit | Delicious Queen Sacrifice gives SMUG SATISFACTION! 😏

#englund #queensac #smug #satisfaction 

Today, I started my morning with a game of 5 | 5 blitz and I was blessed with this cracker of a game! I’d played this on my laptop as the PC that I use as a workstation for my creative work (playing and recording games, video editing) has been plagued with system instability. I think that there is a fault with the motherboard unfortunately… 😢 So, this lovely quick game of the Queen Sacrifice Line in the Englund Gambit/Complex was just the nice pick-me-up I needed, leaving me with the glow of smug satisfaction. 😏

And as a bit of a morale boost (okay, ego boost!), this ended up being a rather accurate game, notwithstanding the technically unsound nature of the opening to begin with.

My Belgian opponent was a man of culture and led with the Queen’s Pawn Opening (1. d4), to which I responded with the uncivilised Englund Gambit (1… e5)! We clearly both knew the theory well and played to the Englund Complex (2. dxe5 Nc6 3. Nf3 Qe7 4. Bf4 Qb4+) position reflexively, using almost no time. Indeed, at the end of turn 4, we had both gained time and each had 5 min 16 sec on the clock.

Even more, my opponent with White taunted their mastery of the refutation of the Englund Complex by smashing out the next three critical moves:

• 5. Bd2! Qxb2
• 6. Nc3! Bb4
• 7. Rb1!

… at breakneck speed: 0.3 seconds, 0.3 seconds, and 1.2 seconds respectively!

For the White player who knows the refutation, they probably expect that Black is cooked. After all, (7… Qa3) is the only sensible move and White has a massive counterattack from this point. For this article, I analysed my opponent’s games on the brilliant tool OpeningTree.com. They were indeed a Queen’s Pawn Opening player and in fact, had refuted the Englund Complex 35 times prior to their game with me. In all 35 games, Black played (7… Qa3), and White had an overwhelming win majority (23 wins, 10 losses, 2 draws).

And thus lies the power of the Queen Sacrifice Line (7… Qxc3!?) – it’s unexpected, it’s transgressive, and it holds the initiative!

White had never played against the Queen Sacrifice Line before and there is something very disconcerting about it. One’s intuition is that it “must be wrong”. And yet, the following moves are practically forced (8. Bxc3 Bxc3+ 9. Nd2 Nxe5), and at the end, somehow it just doesn’t feel like White is obviously “winning”. I’ve previously described this line and position as the Rorschach of chess openings!

The unrelenting nature of this opening is part of the psychological play for Black. Where White should be confident in their ostensible [+3] advantage (according to the engine), moves feel uncomfortable and dangerous. White started playing hesitant tentative moves, taking 24 seconds to find (10. e3), their longest think yet. This move was “okay”, and White’s plan was to play closed and conservatively, and then castle kingside. Unfortunately, their logical follow up move under this schema (11. Be2??) was a blunder, which returns the evaluation back to equality, despite White’s material advantage!

You see, Black has an immediate attack target: the pinned d2-knight, which is defended only by the queen. White must refute this attack first and doesn’t have tempo to spare. I played (11… Ne4!) putting pressure on the pinned piece. White now spent over a minute-and-a-half finding their next move, and to their credit, they found the best response (12. Rb5), to which I had the simple (12… d6).

White was now poised on a knife’s edge. In the above position on turn 13, there is only a single good move which maintains equality. All other moves give an advantage to Black.

💡 Find the move before scrolling down!

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💡 Did you find it?

The solution is:

The only good move for White is the awkward looking Rd5, to add a defender to the pinned d2-knight! If you found this, well done! 👏👏👏

In the game, White played a sensible-looking alternative (13. f4??), but this is a blunder now favouring Black at better than [-2], starting with (13… Bxd2+). The superpower of the Queen Sac Line is twofold. Firstly, by breaking the taboo of queen sacrifices increases the willingness of our opponent to "give back" the queen. Secondly, doggedly attacking as the... underdog, can easily make White feel that they are losing, and this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the game, White convinced themselves that they had to give back the queen to nerf my attack (14. Qxd2??).

Captures, captures, captures, captures… and at the end of turn 16, I emerged up 4 points of material through a pawn and an extra knight. The game progressed quickly for a few more turns, but it quickly entered an endgame where I held the material advantage, with White’s king exposed, and their remaining pawns in isolated islands. Gracefully, my opponent bowed out. Good game, GG!

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