Romantic Chess | BEAUTIFUL tactics DESERVE to be PLAYED! 💖♟️🤩
#romanticchess #vienna #queensac #bishopsac #familyfork
Have you ever found tactical idea in a game, so wonderful, so beautiful, that it DESERVED to be played, regardless of whether it was any good? I had this experience in this game... check out move 10!
At the time of this video and article, I'm participating in an internal Team Australia club tournament. Have you joined your chess.com national/state club? If not, consider checking it out! I've found it very fun playing with and against other Team Australia members, and as it's somewhat competitive over a longer time control (daily), the nature and type of games can be very different to games of rapid, blitz, or bullet.
I had the black pieces and my opponent, fellow Aussie @CheeseMakers, started with a Vienna Game (1. e4 e5 2. Nc3). Interesting! As per my usual approach, I want to pull the game potentially into the Main Line so I respond with the Falkbeer Variation (2... Nf6). White now surprises me with a response that I've never seen before in someone who played the Vienna, (3. d3). Now, if White played the opening with a slightly different move order (e.g., 1. e4 e5 2. d3), this would be the Leonardis Variation. The move isn't a mistake but is a little suboptimal according to Stockfish. I was so curious that after the game, I loaded up my opponent's games in OpeningTree to see how they played the Vienna. It seemed that they were probably an eclectic openings player but never played the Vienna Gambit.
One of the opening principles is if you can take control of the centre with your pawns, it's probably good to do so! I had an option to do this on move 3, but chose to develop my bishop first. The opportunity came again on move 4, so I took it; d5!
White played an interesting set up - a pawn pyramid with the queen on e2. We develop for a few moves, and then on move 10, I suddenly had a flash of inspiration! White had their king and queen on the same dark square diagonal, and I could ALMOST pin the queen with my bishop on b4... But if the queen captured the hanging bishop, forced by the pin, then Nxc2+ royal fork! However, the b4 square was defended by White's d5-knight and I was just one move too slow...
And then I saw it - the entire sequence - that despite possibly not being good for me, was simply BEAUTIFUL to behold! It started with a queen sacrifice - I captured White's knight with my queen (10... Qxd5!?), which now makes the entire sequence work! White naturally captures my queen and I now have the sacrificial bishop pin (11. exd5 Bb4)! White's queen, doomed, captures the bishop, we have a royal fork, I capture Black's queen and the sequence then ends with a pawn trade (12. Qxb4 Nxc2+! 13. Kf2 Nxb4 14. dxc6 Nxc6). Chef’s kiss!
For me, the remainder of the game was a bonus having seen and played this amazing sequence in the match. My opponent played really well and the middlegame battle was fun, but I happily managed to enter a rook and pawn endgame where I was up two pawns. In the final 10 moves of the game, White's king became isolated from their rook pair and pawns, and this allowed me to corral the king to my side of the board. Then on move 48, White made an understandable blunder, possibly based on an endgame heuristic, and got itself trapped in a mating net between my rooks, pawns, and king. GG!
The big takeaway from this game is to look for sacrifices and don't be afraid to use one. The worst thing that can happen is that you lose. So what? They may or may not be good, but they bring joy and delight to the game!
