Pawn Cube! (Beyer Gambit)

#CenterGame #BeyerGambit 

Yesterday, I played a game that started with the four king’s and queen’s pawns in the centre as a pawn cube! This is also known as the Beyer Gambit. As I played d5, completing the pawn cube, I knew that the position was probably unsound for me, but it was aesthetically pleasing, looked fun, and would probably take my opponent out of their expectation. My opponent had opened with the Center Game, e4 and then d4 on the second move.

The Center Game is an aggressive opening and so, I opted to respond in this game with a hyperaggressive tactical style as well. My logic here was that my opponent might be expecting more defensive play, and so, going all in with attacks of my own might cause my opponent to become unbalanced, resulting in inaccuracies and potential blunders. Effectively, my overall strategy in this game was to out-aggro their aggro.

And it worked! The Beyer Gambit is objectively bad – according to Stockfish evaluation, the position outright favours white after d5 at +2.50. However, as you can see in the video as the game progresses, even though white has an objective advantage in the opening, seemingly innocuous moves in the early middle game resulted in the loss of a pawn, and a shift in the advantage to me. Later in the middle game, an objectively bad but very aggressive infiltration by my queen into their territory, while I was on the cusp of being checkmated also worked. My opponent’s slightly inaccurate play allowed me to capture a couple more pawns and then forced a queen trade. This resulted in us entering into an endgame where I had a dominating material advantage.

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

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/43134604941