PIRATE CHESS | Unsound, Illegitimate, Swashbuckling GLORY! 🦜🤪👍🏴☠️♟️
#ruylopez #jaenisch #viennagambit #romanticism
Last week, I had a bit of a massive tilt, dropping to below 1200 ELO in rapid for the first time in a very long time! 😅 I know exactly why this has happened… I’ve been playing a bit too much pirate chess…
Pirate chess? 🤔
That is, rather than playing in a sensible manner and perhaps like a normal person, prioritising winning (😅), I’ve been deliberately trying to play games with swashbuckling tactics, choosing moves which are tricky, even if they are objectively bad and frankly illegitimate!
Now, these tactics are definitely not for everybody, and I don’t claim that this is good chess. Clearly not as I’ve drifted from a peak of around 1400 ELO (which might have been a bit of a fluke) all the way to 1200! However, this is very exciting chess, and I find it a lot of fun. Sometimes, it’s good to indulge in a bit of chess romance, even to a bit of excess! 🤩👍
Note: I think that if I was playing very carefully, my ELO in chess.com rapid is probably around 1350.
Yesterday, I was matched against an Indian player, and we played a couple of games. I was quite motivated as I’d just dipped below 1200 and wanted to end the day at least back in the 1200s!
Game 1: It really was a Jaenisch Gambit week!
https://www.chess.com/game/live/118240102749
Things really do sometimes come in runs and in the first game, I once again had the opportunity to unleash pirate-y romance against the Ruy López Opening with the Jaenisch Gambit, Exchange Variation, Qh5+ line! Last week, I had several games of the Jaenisch (here and here).
My opponent had an interesting approach to the opening, which was to develop their knight before a central pawn. In the contemporary era, we often frame this under the auspices of hypermodernism, but I believe these openings are also more common under traditional Indian approaches to chess. Modern engine analysis and empirical human evidence from the Lichess community database demonstrates that these comparatively unorthodox openings are completely sound, flexible and quite winning!
That said, this hasn’t been something I’ve done much study on. Presently, my typical approach as we’ll see here and in the next game, is to attempt to transpose the opening back into a line where I feel that I have an advantage. So, against the Réti Opening (or Zuckertort Opening, which is arguably more correct historically) (1. Nf3), I usually respond with the Black Mustang Defense (1… Nc6).
A historical digression:
The Black Mustang Defense is one of the best names for a chess opening, but its history is mysterious. Neither of the chess references that I use extensively for research, Unorthodox Chess Openings by Eric Schiller, or The Oxford Companion to Chess by Hooper & Whyld, contain an entry, and nor does Wikipedia! The only statements that I could find about this name only point out a superficial word association. Mustang are wild, free-roaming horses in the Western United States, and are descended from feral domesticated horses originally brought to the Americas by the Spanish conquistadors. And (1… Nc6) is of course, responding with a black horsie on move 1, a “wild” manoeuvre?! 😅
One of the first recorded chess games in modern databases (e.g., the massive LumbrasGigabase) was from 1883, at the Masters’ Tournament of the third DSB Congress (Deutscher Schachbund, ENG: German Chess Federation) held in Nuremberg between two historical stalwarts of my favourite opening in chess, the Vienna Game.
Curt Von Bardeleben (1861-1924), who literally named the opening in 1893, in his book “Die Wiener Partie: Eine Schach-Theoretische Abhandlung” (ENG: The Vienna Game: A Chess Theoretical Treatise), defeated Max Lange (1832-1899), the second president of the DSB. Nuremberg 1883 was Lange’s final appearance in a major tournament.
Von Bardeleben — Lange, 1883, Nuremberg, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire
In the game between von Bardeleben and Lange, their game immediately transposed into a Queen’s Pawn Opening game (2. d4 d5). In my game, it similarly transposed into a standard King’s Pawn Opening game (2. e4 e5), then, onwards to the Ruy López: Jaenisch, Exchange Variation, with Qh5+ (3. Bb5 f5 4. Bxc6 dxc6 5. Nxe5 Qd4 6. Qh5+?).
In this game, White was overconfident with their “winning” attack, and snap captured my rook (6… g6! 7. Nxg6 hxg6 8. Qxh8?? Qxh8), blundering their queen as my queen guards the long dark square diagonal, and hence, the rook! 🤩
Most people usually resign at this point, but White was a good sport and played on! The approach for Black here is quite simple: castle queenside and then launch a massive attack on White’s king, especially if they castle kingside, which they typically will (as their king is exposed on the fully opened e-file, and castling long is several agonising turns away). On move 12, White castles short and this is a blunder! At high depth, the engine identifies a checkmate in no more than 12-moves. Tactically, this isn’t difficult – peel away White’s kingside defensive pawns, for instance, with a piece sacrifice and then attack with the queen. I faff around a bit, not finding the quickest checkmate, but I was never in danger and win by checkmate on move 23.
Game 2: PIRATE CHESS vs the Max Lange Defense!
https://www.chess.com/game/live/118240677257
My Indian opponent was clearly dissatisfied with the loss, and immediate challenged me to a rematch. This time, I had the White pieces and Black played the Nimzowitsch Defense (1. e4 Nc6), continuing with the theme of developing a knight before a central pawn. From the perspective of opening principles, (2. d4) is the logical next move – taking the full centre when you can. However, this will likely transpose the game into Queen’s Pawn Opening lines, and I don’t generally like those. Moreover, I’d likely be playing into my opponent’s area of strength.
So instead, I give up my slight advantage and instead play (2. Nc3), and here, Black has only one good response, (2… e5). Effectively, they tried to transpose my e4-e5 game into a d4-d5 one, but I turned the tables by transposing their attempt into the Vienna Game: Max Lange Defense. Thematically, this seems very appropriate! 🤩
As per pirate romanticism the only appropriate way to play against the Max Lange Defense is the Vienna Gambit (3. f4), they accept (correct), and after (4. Nf3) they play a move that I haven’t previously encountered in the position, which is (4… Bb4) – a very Ruy López-ish move. This makes this match kind of a colour reversed analogue of our previous game! 🤩 Interesting!
From this point, the game diverges quite substantially. I counterattack Black’s offside bishop with (5. Nd5), a powerful square for the queen’s knight in the Vienna. Black ignores this and plays a King’s Gambit like response with (5… g5), to hold onto the won f4-pawn.
Now, one of the highly provocative, dangerous, but potentially effective to play with White in the Vienna Gambit (Max Lange) is to sacrifice a knight on the f7 square. This draws Black’s king into their damaged kingside defences, exposing it to a further attack. The Hamppe-Allgaier Gambit is a specific line in the Max Lange Defense, and in fact, I last played it for a delicious win at the beginning of the year in a match in the 2024 Chess.com Daily Chess Championship.
The idea is simple: sacrifice material to smash up the black king’s courtyard, infiltrate with the queen, and chase Black’s king! In the confined space, there is the potential to find a checkmate, or if things go awry, wrangle for a draw by repetition!
And so, it begins! If one reviews the engine’s evaluation, it thinks that I’m nuts, and perhaps, rightly so! 🤪 Firstly, (6. h4), which allows the game to go down the Hamppe-Allgaier Gambit structure. The idea is that the h-pawn supports (6… g4! 7. Ng5!?), the king’s knight leaping into the fray. The knight seems trapped should Black push their either their f- or h-pawn, but it doesn’t matter because the knight was there for the sacrificial attack (8. Nxf7!? Kxf7) and to die on the field of battle!
The next step was that I needed to clear the f3 and g4 squares – I needed to open the light square diagonal for my queen. So, (9. gxf3) and I was hoping for (9… gxf3 10. Qf3+). Black saw through my intention, but the correct move for them, the refutation, eluded them. The conceptual idea is that Black needs to consolidate the defence of their very vulnerable and exposed king. And so, the backwards (Be7 or Bd6) would have been best. However, Black’s eye was on their vulnerable g4-pawn with their king exposed on the soon-to-be fully open f-file. A bit intemperately, Black immediately pushed their g-pawn to (9… g3).
At this point, the evaluation returns close to equality, but Stockfish wants to play staid moves. In essence, the engine calculates that if Black played perfectly, they would refute White’s attack. Thus, the engine recommends trading away the attack with (10. Nxb4) and enter a middlegame where Black has only a small advantage. Boring! 👎😒
The point of the knight sacrifice was bombastic chess, so to be tonally consistent, I applied more pressure with (10. Bc4), threatening a discovered check! Black is clearly spooked by the move and has the first long think of the match. Their best move is to be unperturbed by the danger on their shores and counterattack with their own advanced crewman, their g-pawn! Black needed to find the potential tempo winning (10… g2!), but this was a complicated calculation. Instead, they played a reasonable looking (10… Ne5?) attacking my c4-bishop, which negates the threatened discovered check.
Here, I had a long think. Do I move to save the bishop, but lose the tactic and tempo? Have I been forced to trade down with (Nxb4 Nxc4)? And then I wondered, what if I sacrifice the bishop as well! 🤔 What if I trade material for one step of tempo? The more I looked, the more I liked it until I was grinning maniacally! 🤪 So, it was time to double-down, give a prayer to Caïssa, and remember that fortune favours the bold: (11. f4!?)
However, there is method in my madness! After Black captures my bishop (11… Nxc4), both of their active pieces are on the wrong side of the board to defend their king. With the open light square diagonal, I could now action the previously described “simple” tactical idea for White:
Sacrifice material to smash up the black king’s courtyard, infiltrate with the queen, and chase Black’s king! In the confined space, there is the potential to find a checkmate, or if things go awry, wrangle for a draw by repetition!
This seems to go well initially, (12. Qh5+ Kf8 13. Qf5+ Nf6 14. Nxf6) and I win a piece! Black counters with (14… d6), revealing an attack on my queen. I saw that this was problematic, but my second knight got to die in a blaze of glory with (15. Nd7+) double-check, but Black correctly finds (15… Ke7), meaning that the knight was trapped.
I thought for another full minute, and part of this was simply accepting that the knight was lost. Once again, my goal was to bring another piece into the attack, or at least the appearance of the threat to do so. So, (16. b3!?), with an attack on Black’s c4-knight and threatening Bb2, putting my dark square bishop on the long dark square diagonal like a laser beam! Now, this is technically a mistake as Black is simply just one step of tempo too quick, especially if they find the excellent (16… Ne3!). This is a bit hard to see as it looks like e3 is defended… except for the fact that my d2-pawn was pinned by Black’s b4-bishop to the king.
Black plays the “obvious” move in the position and captures my knight (16… Bxd7); fare thee well, your loss will no be in vain! This is a relative inaccuracy as Black’s king is now very much trapped physically with White’s queen in a 3x3 box (sixth to eight ranks, e- to g-files), and so cannot “run” away. Technically, Black is fine as the correct steps will allow either Black’s queen or bishop to intervene, but one false move and it is checkmate (or at least a forced draw)!
The dance of death!
- Turn 17 – Qg5 – check! – king steps back from e7 to e8.
- Turn 18 – Qh5 – check! – king slides to f8.
- And turn 19 – Qh6 – check! – and the king blunders by returning to e7!
The White queen glides towards the king (20. Qg7+!) achieving opposition! Black’s king has two legal moves – return to e8 and face the immediate loss of a rook and what seems like, at least, draw by repetition (20… Ke8 Qxh8+). Or the king tries to escape by moving forward, and that’s what Black played (20… Ke6??).
I previously wrote that the king was trapped in a 3x3 box, but why is that the case when the fifth rank is empty? An important pattern to recognise is that two pawns side-by-side project a forcefield in front of them. This can sometimes be easy to miss!
And so, I got a perfectly unreasonable ending to finish this game of swashbuckling pirate chess with (21. f5#); pawn checkmate! 🤣 Arrgh, it’s a pirate’s life! 🦜😆👍🏴☠️♟️
