Fantastic Giraffe Attack | Cracking open the king's castle! 🦒
#vienna #giraffeattack
I haven't played very many games of the Vienna recently, so I was really happy to have had this game of the Giraffe Attack, one of my favourite lines (1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Bc5 3. Qg4)!
The opening went my way, and with (6. Nd5), I had a winning advantage of over [+5]! Although the Giraffe Attack is a suboptimal opening, it is tricky for Black to navigate! Black then played something that I didn't expect, which was to sacrifice their bishop with (6... Bxf2+). I knew that this wasn't a good move, but I must admit that it did disorient me slightly. Although I maintained my advantage for the next few turns, I didn't manage to convert my advantage to a winning attack.
On move 17, I miscalculated with (17. Be4). I had assumed that Black's knight on f6 was pinned to its queen, but underappreciated that after Nxe4, the knight had a follow up attack on my queen. In essence, I blundered my bishop and lost my advantage from [+5 → 0.00]. However, I was able to follow up with a transformation on move 19, with a strong attack on Black's king, which had castled short.
Black played the expected (19. h6). My intuition was that pulling back the knight was a mistake, and even considered the correct move (20. f6), ostensibly hanging both the pawn and knight! However, I couldn't calculate through the attack and at about a minute, I chickened out with (20. Nf3), indeed, a mistake according to the engine [-2.5].
The curious thing with after (20. f6) is that although both the pawn on f6 and the knight on g5 appear to be hanging, it would be a blunder by Black to capture either! This would cause a critical weakness to the black king's defences which ultimately requires Black to sacrifice their queen to avoid checkmate!
Black now makes an error of their own. Up on material, Black's best approach is to immediate trade queens to permanently nerf my attack, and then win the endgame. However, Black attempted a more aggressive approach, which of course, gave me opportunities!
On move 22, I found the critical move (22. f6) and Black attempts to strike out with (22. g5). However, this was a blunder as (23. Qxh6) allows the queen to infiltrate, and one step away from checkmate, casting a mating net. Black can only delay checkmate by sacrificing their queen for my f-pawn on f6 and so opts to resign. GG!
The big takeaway for me is to develop greater familiarity with this attack pattern around the king with the forward f-pawn and queen!
