Leonhardt Gambit | Scandinavian Queen TRAP!
#scandinavian #leonhardtgambit #brilliant #queentrap
Against the Qa5 (Main Line) of the Scandinavian Defense, White has the majestic Leonhardt Gambit (1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qa5 4. b4). Although this is slightly suboptimal, it is often very winning as it catches the Scandinavian player off guard. Consider after Black captures the pawn (4... Qxb4), the evaluation is only [-0.1] despite being down 1 point of material. This means that White has a substantially better position! The usual continuation of the Leonhardt Gambit is then (5. Rb1). However, within the Leonhardt Gambit lies a devious and devastating trap for the Scandinavian queen!
This now starts with the audacious (5. Nb5) immediately attacking the c7 pawn, which would come with an absolute fork of the king and rook. Black's queen will commonly return to a5, defending the c7 pawn. This now allows us to play the next move in the trap (6. Bc4), a seeming developing move that might be seen as a little slow. However, the trap has almost been sprung and here, the single most common move by Black (49%) is to attack our knight with the pawn (6... c6). This, however, is a blunder [from -1.4 to +1.3] as we now have the brilliant bishop sacrifice with check (7. Bxf7+)! Black will typically still not be aware of the trap at this point as in 90% of lower rated games of blitz and rapid on the Lichess community database, Black takes the bishop with the king (7... Kxf7) and this natural looking move is a blunder [+4.5] that will lose them the queen!
This is as we now have (8. Qh5+) and suddenly Black realises their mistake. Our queen and Black's queen are on the same rank and a knight move with check revealed a discovered attack on Black's undefended queen! The curious thing here is that Black has only three legal moves and all three results in the loss of the queen - hence a trap! Two of the legal moves (g6 and Ke6) can be seen to immediately result in an of the queen. The third move (8... Kf6), which is what my opponent played, still results in a queen loss but is a bit further down the line. In fact, this move is worse than (8... g6) with the evaluation going further in my favour [+5.5]. We now have (9. Bb2), making use of the open b-file to give another check, and bring another piece into the attack!
And on move 11 with (11. Nc7+), Black is forced to trade their queen for the knight. Any other move results in checkmate with (12. Qe8#) next turn! And so, on move 12, the dust settles. Black survived mate in the opening but were forced to trade a queen and pawn for two minor pieces, have lost the right to castle, have no development, and their king is exposed in the centre of the board [+6.1]!
My opponent was a good sport and played on but couldn't overcome the disadvantage. Black's only potential advantage is that they numerically have one additional piece. So, my goal is to try to use my positional advantage with my queen to whittle away at their material without trading back and aim to restrain their development so that they extra piece isn't felt. This was successful, but in doing so, on move 27, I missed a beautiful [+M4] line that takes advantage of the magic of double check with queen and knight. Nonetheless, once Black lost a piece without compensation, their defences collapsed. On move 33 Black resigned down 10 points of material, with another impending clean loss of their rook next turn. GG!
Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/78475358047
