Vienna Gambit | Double Brilliant BEATDOWN!! 💪♟️🤩
#viennagambit #romance #doublecheck #doublebrilliant #sacforwin
One of the things that I love about the Vienna Gambit is the chance for romanticism! Every now and then, you get a game that is just about perfect, as was the case with this unrated game of 10-min rapid against a random opponent:
- Two brilliant moves!
- Two piece sacrifices – a bishop and a knight!
- A double check!
In the romantic style, we sacrifice material for activity and the opportunity to attack, and indeed, often forgo the opportunity to recapture material! Because winning doesn’t require having the most material at the end of the game, but rather, checkmate is checkmate!
The game starts with the Vienna Gambit in the Max Lange Defense (1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3. f4) and Black made the mistake by declining through developing their second knight (3… Nf6). And thus demonstrates the majesty of the Vienna Gambit! In most e4 e5 openings, a Two Knights approach is usually perfectly good for Black.
And yet, this is a serious mistake in the Vienna Gambit! By move 6, we have both our knights developed, full control of the centre with our pawns, and Black is massively behind in development! In fact, I'm so far ahead that when Black attempts to challenge the centre with the slightly tepid (7… d6) and then capture (8… dxe5), and double down to capture again (9… Nxd4), we can completely ignore the material loss (at +2 for Black) and focus on building an unstoppable force against Black’s weak f7-pawn!
We uncork a wonderful sacrificial dance on move 10, starting with the beautiful sacrifice, (10. Bxf7+!!). After the king captures (10… Kxf7), we then have (11. Nxe5+) double check! Black’s king retreats to their starting square but now the queen leaps onto that exposed light square diagonal (12. Qh5+) and Black plays the only move that makes sense (12… g6), blocking the check and seemingly stopping the attack. But we now have our second brilliant move, the only move that is good by sacrificing our knight (13. Nxg6!!). After (13… hxg6), it looks like we win Black’s rook on h8, but no, we press on with the attack (14. Qxg6+) as Black’s h8 rook is irrelevant!
At this point, Black is up 4 points of material, but apart from their knight, gormlessly sitting on d4, every single one of Black’s remaining pieces are undeveloped on their starting square! 😲 And so, we hunt the black king, bringing every piece into the attack and overwhelm their position! Two moves later, Black recalls their knight to bolster their defence (16… Ne6??), but it’s a game ending blunder [+M14] as (17. Rd1+), my final piece joins the frenzy and skewers Black’s king on their queen along the fully open d-file.
Black is a good sport and plays on, but the end is nigh. My pieces corral Black’s king forward and out of the limited defence of his pieces, dragging him to the middle of the board on the a-file. Exposed and surrounded by enemies, my queen ends his misery with (23. Qa4#). Good game, GG! 🤩
