Vienna Gambit | WOE be upon the UNPREPARED! ☠️♟️
#vienna #maxlange #viennagambit
One of the reasons that the Vienna Gambit is so good at the beginner and intermediate levels, is that most ways of playing against it, other than a single response, is bad. This means that against the unprepared opponent, the Vienna Gambit can be extremely winning.
This was another game from the internal Team Australia tournament that I'm playing at the time of this article and video. I had the white pieces, played the Vienna; Black responded with the Max Lange Defense, and as usual now, I responded with the Vienna Gambit in the Max Lange Defense (1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3. f4).
In the typical Falkbeer Variation, Vienna Gambit, the only good response by Black is the Main Line (3... d5). In the Max Lange Vienna Gambit, the only good response by Black is to Accept the gambit (3... exf4). In this game, Black opted to develop their second knight - sensible looking, but a mistake! The Max Lange Vienna Gambit is curiously rarely discussed in social media and YouTube videos, and there are pros and cons to this. The con is that you just must play it to learn its various forms. The pros include that few people know what they are doing when facing it!
The second knight transposes into a known bad position for Black if facing against the Falkbeer Vienna Gambit - this is the declining of the Vienna Gambit with 3... Nc6. For the Vienna Gambit player, this is one of the best outcomes, as (4. fxe5 Nxe5 5. d4) and we end up chasing Black's knights, gain full central control and in the typical line, will eventually force Black's king's knight to un-develop.
However, Black recognised their mistake, but decided to double-down! They launch their knight forward (5... Nxe4), trading material for initiative, and I suspect that they saw what they hoped was a winning attack with a follow up Qh4+! I admired their spirit, but I have studied this potential line previously, and I knew that it was a serious mistake/blunder!
This is after (6. Nxe4 Qh4+), the seemingly powerful black wayward queen attack is immediately blunted by moving the white knight to either the f2 or g3 squares on the dark square diagonal. Not only does this block the check, but it also defends the e4 square, so Black's queen is suddenly misplaced without a target. Black's knight is still hanging, and White now has the opportunity to develop pieces while harassing the black queen, winning and accumulating tempo.
Black keeps up the attack, now launching their bishop (7... Bb4+), but after (8. c3), Black has two pieces hanging. Although they castle their king to safety (8... O-O), their attack has come to a grinding halt and they are about to lose catastrophic material.
Their knight is the first to fall (9. dxe5). Black attempts to bring in a rook to replace the knight, but (10. Nf3) both defends the e5-pawn and wins tempo by attacking the black queen. Then, their bishop is the next to fall (12. cxb4). I suspected that Black, given their history, was going to attempt to use their queen to infiltrate alone and win back material, but had calculated that this was going to work for them. Indeed, all it achieved was allowing me to win more tempo by developing a piece and threatening their queen and with (15. Bd3), the evaluation had reached [+9] in White's favour.
A move later, I had 6-pieces ready to attack Black's king and Stockfish identified that forced mate was now possible [+M12]. Although I absolutely couldn't see a forced line of that length, I was confident that I was completely winning, though of course, care is still required. I found a mating line - not the quickest according to Stockfish on analysis but was able to program it in using the "conditional moves" feature, and ended the game on move 24 with a lovely checkmate!
The big takeaway from this game is that even if you don't play the Vienna Game yourself, you'd need to learn how to respond against it at the intermediate level. Woe be upon the unprepared!
