Tactics | Sticking to a PLAN! ⚡ Quick Wins #82
#tactics #quickwins
chess noob Quick Wins! is a 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.
Today's game is from one of my Team Australia clubmates @Bumblebek, who is a relative beginner, rated in the 400s. They submitted this game of 1-minute bullet which is a very nice demonstration of a particular phenomenon that occurs in beginner-intermediate chess. That is, the player who has a battle plan and follows it, has an advantage against an opponent who doesn't have a plan. Just following a plan provides purpose and cohesion to the moves, and in the context where the game isn't very accurate, which is typically true in casual chess in short time controls, this can be decisive!
My subscriber had the White pieces and played the King's Pawn Opening: Leonardis Variation (1. e4 e5 2. d3). This is a bit suboptimal, but part of the plan. It opens the diagonal for the dark square bishop, and the opening is uncommon. In bullet where you are relying on rapid pattern recognition, this takes the opponent out of their expectation.
Black responds sensibly by playing (2... d5), taking the full centre, but White gambits their e-pawn for activity, and uses the tempo to advance their knight into attacking position (4. Ng5!?). This is inaccurate, but the battle plan is to hit Black's weak f7-pawn with knight and queen (4... exd3 5. Qf3!?).
With the immediate rapid attack that is unbalanced, Black is notionally better at almost [-2], but this is only if they play accurately. They block the mating attack with (5... Nf6?!) a sensible looking move that is a bit inaccurate. However, in the subsequent moves, Black flails at White trying to make a counterattack, but this approach was a mistake. It was important for Black to just develop. White rebuffs Black's counterattack easily and wins more advantage in development doing so.
On move 9, White plays (9. Nde4!?) with the goal of dislodging Black's f6-knight. This move is an inaccuracy in evaluation, with White giving up their objective advantage back to equality [0.00]. Simply, Black isn't obliged to move their knight! However, part of the psychological game is creating opportunities for your opponent to blunder, and here Black lost sight of continuity, perhaps forgetting why their knight was on f6 and took the bait (9... Nxe4??)!
With the knight no longer blocking White's queen's access to the f7 square, checkmate (10. Qxf7#)! GG!
