Vienna Game 2… c6 | GREEDY QUEEN CHASE! 😋
#vienna #greedyqueen #royalfork
This game is a cautionary tale. Bringing out the queen early is often seen as a mistake out of defined lines of theory; certainly it is risky. However, when given the opportunity, it can be difficult to resist gobbling material with the queen like a hungry-hungry hippo, especially when your opponent is seemingly hanging material! The risk, however, is by allowing your opponent to develop while chasing your queen, and by not developing pieces, the greedy queen is at risk of being trapped!
I had the white pieces in this game, and I played the Vienna, while my opponent responded with the unusual c6 (1. e4 e5 2. Nc5 c6). I opted to play a somewhat more conservative approach in this game, and Black surprised me again with the early (5... Qc7) against my Vienna Gambit-ish (5. f4). Interesting!
The opening then becomes very interesting as Black doubles down and keeps their queen in play on the board! In this situation, I decided to simply develop my pieces, and then when the opportunity arose, chased Black's queen with tempo. Black eventually threatened to capture my b-pawn, and this is a salutary lesson for everybody... it is typically a mistake for the queen to capture an ostensibly "hanging" b-pawn (outside of theory like in the Englund Complex) as the queen is at high risk of being trapped!
Now, I blunder the position hanging my knight (14. Rb1?? Qxc3+) but the curious thing is that it didn’t matter in this game! A few moves later, Black inadvertently hangs their queen, which I sprung on move 20 with a royal fork (20. Bb5+)! Unfortunately for Black, at move 20, they had invested TEN of their opening moves, yes HALF of their moves, on the queen. This means that at the point they lost their queen - their most active piece - White had multiple attacking lines.
What is fascinating is that White and Black had material equality after Black lost their queen! The evaluation was at [-6]! With the queen lost, Black's position completely collapsed in the following moves. I rotated my rook to infiltrate onto the seventh rank, forcing a trade of Black's remaining knight pair, their remaining good asset - (31. Rxd7 Nxd7 32. Qxd7 Rb8?? 33. Rxf7) - and the game is over. With my queen and rook forming a battery on the seventh rank, with Black's king stuck on the back rank, Black recognised the pattern and opted to resign. GG!
The big takeaway from this game is to avoid speculative early queen adventurism. Unless you KNOW there is a checkmate, lone queen attacks will typically fail!
