I love Romantic Chess!
#RuyLopez #JaenischGambit
I love the romantic style of chess - audacious tactics, bold sacrifices, to support a rapid massive attack on the enemy king. It's a super enjoyable and fun way to play a game!
In this game, my opponent who played White played the Ruy Lopez Opening and I responded with my go to, the Jaenisch Gambit, to which they accepted (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 f5 4. exf5). I pushed my e-pawn threatening the knight (4... e4) and White decided to exchange their bishop (5. Bxc6).
Here, I made my first blunder. I captured the knight with my e-pawn (5... exf3) without thinking and realised my mistake almost immediately. I should have captured the bishop first in the exchange as the bishop can now capture my pawn (6. Bxf3). This left me two pawns down for almost no compensation, with no development. Stockfish thought that this was a terrible position for me as well giving a rating of almost [+3].
White took advantage of their initiative and attacked with their light squared bishop (8. Bh5+). Here, I took a pause, and had a longer think about the position. I knew that I was behind. It looked like that I could trade my opponent's bishop for my knight (8... Nxh5), but then saw that this would result in White developing their queen to repeat the attack and I really didn't like the look of that line. I suspected that keeping my material by side-stepping my king out of check (8... Kf8) was probably best from the perspective of evaluation, but I didn't want to play a positional defensive game.
Instead, I played (8... g6), trading away my king-side pawns for the purposes of opening my h-file. This was a high-risk strategy as my king was still on that side, but I thought that I might be able to get a big attack on White's king now that it had castled by creating some semi-opened files. This is one of the ideas in the Exchange Variations of the Jaenisch Gambit (https://www.chess.com/blog/vitualis/checkmate-in-16-jaenisch-gambit-chess-noob-quick-wins-2). At the end of move 10, Stockfish still hated my position at over [+5], but I now had a rook staring directly at White's h2 pawn and White had no pieces developed other than their now offside bishop.
I next moved my dark square bishop on d6 to also attack the h2 pawn with my rook (11... Bd6), forcing a potential gain in tempo. White pushed the h-pawn (12. h3). Next, I activated my king (12... Kg7) attacking the offside white bishop and connecting my rook and queen on my back rank. This again won some development tempo as White had to withdraw their bishop. My next couple of moves fianchettoed my light square bishop on b7 (13... b6; and 14... Bb7).
I was now set for a "romantic" sacrificial attack against White's king, aiming to find a win from a completely losing position [+7]! Both bishops were facing the White King. And my back rank had both rooks and queen connected, which will be important as I strip open the files on the king-side.
First attack: my light square bishop sacrifices itself and takes out the g-pawn (15... Bxg2 16. Kxg2)! Second attack: my rook now sacrifices itself and takes out the h-pawn (16... Rxh3 17. Kxh3).
And now the third attack: my queen infiltrates and chases the White king in the shattered shell of their castle!
On move 25, White moves their king to the wrong square blundering a [+18] advantage to a [-M1]. I actually miss this, making a rook move in only 6 seconds to give another check. However, I didn't miss this second time and on move 26, I win by checkmate down 9 points of material!
Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/60215469537
