Hungarian/Benko Opening | AMAZING BISHOP SHOWDOWN! ðŸ¤
#hungarian #benko #bishopshowdown #blunder
One the interesting things when playing people on chess.com is that your opponents are from all over the world. In some countries, the local traditions with chess openings can be different. For instance, my understanding is that openings like the King's Fianchetto Opening (1. g3), also known as the Hungarian Opening or Benko Opening, is quite common in India. The logic is to immediately fianchetto the bishop (2. Bg2) and the opening is quite flexible and can transpose into many other lines that involve a fianchetto. This fits in well with the hypermodern approaches.
This is what I played against with the Black pieces against an Indian player with White, in round 1 of the 2024 Chess.com Daily Chess Championship!
With daily games, I have a habit of losing continuity and undercalculating sometimes due to the time between moves. This struck on move 6 with (6... Bh3), a blunder! I thought that this was potentially a very clever move as I lodge my light square bishop in a place where it can't be removed, I prevent White from castling kingside, and I saw a potential checkmate form a very early quick win in combination with another attack on White's weak f-pawn on f2. However, I simply forgot about White's bishop on the long light square diagonal, and hence, hung my b-pawn on b7, and potentially, my rook in the corner!
White punished me immediately by capturing the b-pawn (7. Bxb7), but here, I decided to treat that as a gambit, and to play a very tricky move and double-down on my quick win attacking idea with (7... Ng4). Stockfish calls this a blunder as I literally am hanging my rook. However, White can't capture it immediately as they would hang checkmate, i.e., (8. Bxa8 Bxf2#)!
White did see this, but against the threats, didn't find the best response (which was d4 - which blocks my bishop's vision on f2, and wins tempo by attacking my bishop). They played (8. Ne4) which is seemingly a good move - defending f2 and attacking my dark square bishop on c5. However, I expected this and with (8... Bg2), we have an extremely interesting position! Both light square bishops are on the long diagonal - it's like an old Spaghetti Western film with two cowboys duelling down the main street of town!
White blinks first, capturing my rook (9. Bxa8) and this was a blunder! As I now had (9... Bxe4), capturing White's knight and removing the defender to the f2 square. White captures my bishop with their bishop (10. Bxe4) seemingly winning the duel, but not seeing this was a distraction from the real attack on f2! With (10... Nxf2), my knight attacks White's queen, who cannot escape as she is smothered!
After winning the queen, my approach was simple. Consolidate and keep the king safe. Then, simplify with piece trades to move towards an endgame where my superiority from having a queen will be felt.
On move 23, I was able to do just that by trading my rook for White's knight. This trade might seem disadvantageous materially, but it converted the game to an endgame of my queen + bishop versus White's rook and bishop. White didn't recognise that their rook needed to stay on the back rank to defend their king at risk of back rank mate. Combined with their earlier preference to fianchetto their bishops (and thus, having moved their g- and b-pawns to accommodate this), this resulted in a critical weakness in their king's defence. White resigned on move 27 with checkmate inevitable. GG!
The big takeaway from this game is that you can sometimes approach a blunder as an aggressive gambit!
