Exciting NEWS! | And a brilliant Vienna Game: Giraffe Attack! 🦒♟️🤪

#news #chessbots #chessup2 #giraffeattack #vienna #brilliant 

Today I have some exciting news for my channel and blog, and then I’ll show you a beautiful position out of the whimsical and devious Giraffe Attack! 🦒♟️🤪

* * *

In the past week, I’ve been in contact with a couple of really great chess companies who wanted to collaborate. The first is Chessiverse, an online chess platform that specialises in AI-powered chess bots.

“So what?”, you might ask. Oftentimes, I want to play against a real human being, and I come to Chess.com for that. However, there are times where I don’t want to feel the pressure of playing against a person and the etiquette demanded: for instance, if I’m waiting for someone in the real world, the time I have is unpredictable and I might not be able to finish a game. A bot is great for that!

Chessiverse has a massive range of bots across the ELO range and moreover, they use AI training so that the bots respond more like an actual human at that strength and style. One of the challenges with bots is that they’re often not very fun to play against, especially when “weakened”; we’ve all seen instances where they play bizarrely bad inhuman moves, like shuffling a piece. One of the fantastic opportunities with “humanised” chess bots is that it becomes possible to practice Romantic style opening attacks and gambits, openings which don’t normally work against bots as they don’t experience the same cognitive biases of human players. In fact, almost a year ago in an article introducing the Traxler Counterattack, one of the sample games was against a Chessiverse bot who succumbed to the attack! 🤩

In the coming weeks, I’ll be reviewing the Chessiverse service and demonstrate a combination truly made in heaven: Chessiverse as the robot brain to Chessnut Move as the robot body, connected together by Chessconnect! Also, there are rumours afoot in the Chessiverse laboratory that an AI-bot of a certain chess noob might be in development… 😲

🔥 Use coupon code CHESSNOOB64 for 20% off the price of a premium tier subscription!
Note: I receive no affiliate payment; it’s just a simple discount for my readers! 🤩

* * *

The second big news is that the good people at Bryght Labs have also reached out for a collaboration, and I’ve agreed to review the ChessUp 2 electronic chess board.

This electronic chess board was released in early 2025 and it has arguably the deepest hardware level integration with Chess.com, and it is the only board that has been directly promoted by Chess.com themselves. The ChessUp 2 does seem to have a few relatively unique features I’m very keen to experience in person:

• “Touch Sense”, where the board knows when the player is touching a piece, allowing for naturalistic piece handling (e.g., sliding pieces, pausing mid-move to think), with the move only registered when the piece is released.
• The board square lighting system to convey information to the player – the use of colour and lighting animation is probably the best-in-class implementation of this feature.

Hopefully, I’ll receive the unit and accessories in the next couple of weeks, and I’ll put it through its paces, including taking it out and about! Fantastically, the ChessUp 2 also supports Chessconnect meaning that it’s not locked within the Chess.com ecosystem and will work with Chessiverse, among several other chess platforms as well!

* * *

A sublime line in the Giraffe Attack!

If you’ve been following my channel for some time, you’d know that I just simply love the Giraffe Attack (1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Bc5 3. Qg4!?), a silly name for a stupendously fun line in the Vienna Game. In fact, I have a whole playlist on the Giraffe Attack, which currently sits at over 20 entries! 😆

The fascinating thing about the Giraffe Attack is simply how RARELY it appears in the literature and in chess databases. There are no games of it recorded prior to 1960, and there exists only a handful of master games since. In the Lichess community database of over 115 million Vienna Games, less than 1 in 1,400 enter the beginning of the Giraffe Attack. In fact, from the preceding response by Black to use the Anderssen Defense (2… Bc5), fewer than 1% of Vienna Game players choose the Giraffe Attack. This is remarkable when you consider that the Giraffe Attack is one of the most successful options for White from the position, winning 53% to Black’s 44%.

Now, it is true that the Giraffe Attack is suboptimal, but for the Romantic style enthusiasts, there are many openings which are objectively much worse. As a comparison, Stockfish rates the Giraffe Attack has having a relative disadvantage of the same magnitude as the entirely conventional Modern Defense!

The logic of the Giraffe Attack is to immediately punish Black for bringing out their bishop early by threatening their g7-pawn. The trickiness of the position is that the threat on the g-pawn is nuanced: it’s real, but Black doesn’t need to directly defend it. Black’s best move is to seemingly hang the pawn with (3… Nf6), and if White is greedy (4. Qxg7), then (4… Rg8) is potentially a devastating blow. At the beginner-intermediate level, Black will typically not play Nf6 and instead respond with Qf6 or g6, both of which are inaccuracies.

In this game, Black played (3… g6), ostensibly defending their g-pawn, but notice that Black has some major dark square weaknesses around their king! The critical move to know for White is (4. Qg3), immediately pressuring Black’s e5-pawn and those weak dark squares. Black must immediately defend the e5-pawn, with either Nc6 or d6, but many beginner-level players might not see the devastating risk. In fact, between 1 in 4 to 1 in 8 players play (4… Nf6??), possibly by rote, and blunder the opening!

In this game, after (5. Qxe5+), my opponent resigned on turn 8 after (8. Nd7+). I thought this was a very cool attack: my knight is hanging three-ways as it can be captured by the queen, queen’s bishop, and queen’s knight, but if any of them do so, then my queen slips down the weak dark square diagonal, captures Black’s rook and it is mate!

However, I found an even better move on analysis with (8. d4!!), an oh no, my queen sacrifice! If Black thinks that I simply made a rookie mistake and took the poisoned giraffe queen (8… dxe5??), then my dark square bishop leaps off the starting line and snipes Black’s king through the gap in the dark squares, and it’s a beautiful, unexpected checkmate (9. Bh6#!). Good game, GG!

* * *

For inspiration on great opening attacks to play in blitz chess, check out my new book, “Become a Chess Assassin! Learn to play the best chess opening attacks“.