Quick Wins #14 | CRUSH Qd8 Scandinavian in 10 moves!

#ScandinavianDefense 

chess noob Quick Wins! is a new series of short videos, to demonstrate very quick wins!  As a beginner, you become aware of the Scholar's Mate and the Fool's Mate, but neither of these show up in real games.  However, there are tricky quick checkmates and wins that occur, even at the intermediate level of chess.

This was a surprisingly quick game that I played on my Chessnut Air against a random opponent who blitzed out their moves.  I had the white pieces and Black responded to e4 with the Scandinavian Defense, and then the retreating Qd8-line (1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qd8).

My view is that this is not a good line for Black as White's strategy in the opening is now is now relatively simple - to rapidly develop to exploit the "extra move" gifted by Black.  Each of my subsequent moves focussed on developing a pawn or pieces to control the centre.  Curiously, Black played some relatively passive pawn moves until move 6, where they attempted to pin my knight to my king with their light square bishop (6... Bg4).  However, in the context of Black's lack of central control, this assertive move was a fatal blunder - Stockfish 15 rates it at worse than [+13] at depths greater than 30.

One of my favourite opening tactical manoeuvres was now available!  A brilliancy (7. Bxf7+), bishop sacrifice and capture of the f-pawn with check!  Then, follow up with a knight advance (8. Ne5+) escaping the pin with check!  After the king is forced back, the queen now captures the upstart bishop (9. Qxg4).

Black belatedly developed their knight to counterattack my queen, but it was too late.  The bishop sacrifice had punched a hole in Black's defence of their king along the light squares.  My queen sidesteps the black knight to g6 (10. Qg6#) and the king is sniped down the diagonal while sitting on his throne surrounded by his army.  GG!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/62723456653