Triangle of Doom!

#KingsPawnOpening #MengariniOpening 

Interesting geometries sometimes arise on the chess board. In the game I’m going to talk about today, my opponent’s king and queen became curiously isolated from the rest of their pieces in the middle game, in what I’ve labelled a triangle of doom. They also led with an unorthodox opening, the Mengarini Opening, which is where white starts with the waiting move of pushing a flank pawn one square to a3.

What went wrong for my opponent? Although a3 didn’t place white at a disadvantage, it effectively resulted in a loss of tempo. This allowed me to take the centre with my pawns. Their inaccurate manoeuvre in developing and undeveloping the knight resulted in a further falling behind. Then, for almost the entire game, my opponent’s queen was their own active piece, leading to an even further loss of tempo with it being harrassed by my less valuable pieces. Once I had infiltrated my opponent’s position and back rank with rook and queen, creating the “triangle of doom”, the game was over.

This game demonstrates the rationale for the general opening principles. Try to control the centre with your pawns, and take the centre with both if you can. Don’t bring out your queen early without good reason. Develop your pieces, prioritising knights over bishops. Castle to put move your king out of the centre and activate your rook.

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

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/44769565067 

Originally published: https://adventuresofachessnoob.com/2022/05/07/triangle-of-doom/