Incredible tension at the end of the Vienna opening!

#ViennaGame #MaxLangeDefense 

Today, I played an absolutely fantastic fun game of the Vienna Game. In this game, my opponent played the Max Lange Defense, which is to respond to the Vienna on move 2 symmetrically with Nc6. Being a bit cheeky, I attempted to scholar’s mate, which of course, doesn’t work at the intermediate level. Indeed, moving the queen out early is probably a mistake as the queen can become a target. Amazingly in this game, by the end of the opening and entering the middle game, my opponent and I had developed most of our pieces, but neither of us had captured. The centre of the board was almost completely packed, creating this incredible tension of threats, defenses, and counterattacks!

Once the centre exploded, we were each left with only half our pieces. One of the consequences of there being so many threats is that it is very easy to miscount and blunder. I blundered first, though perhaps the best line for my opponent to capitalise the advantage was rather obscure. My opponent blundered second, and this gave me a huge advantage in the middle game. It still wasn’t easy though as we then entered a rather complicated endgame. Once again, it was a matter of not who blunders first, or even the most, but who blunders last! Luckily, that wasn’t me and I managed to get a nice win by checkmate.

I hope you found this video interesting, and thanks for watching!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/39044935289 

Originally published: https://adventuresofachessnoob.com/2022/02/27/incredible-tension-at-the-end-of-the-vienna-opening/