Vienna Game 2... d6 | TRICKY! Game Review #13
#vienna #gamereview
Welcome to another episode of the "chess noob Game Review" series where the focus will be on identifying in how a game, whether I win or lose, could have been improved. This gives me an opportunity to reflect more deeply about a game and hopefully, the lessons that I draw for myself will be helpful to my fellow beginner and beginner-intermediate chess players!
In the Vienna Game, a somewhat uncommon response by Black is the conservative 2... d6, what I've previous called the "Philidor-ish Defense". In that game, I called it "bad", but it isn't that bad! In a way, the slower conservative approach by Black can foil an aggressive approach by White. As I don't encounter this line very frequently, I realised that I haven't really thought through some of these positions.
White has a range of options after (2... d6). Although the immediate (3. d4) is the best move according to Stockfish and what I usually play, after the pawn trade and recapture by my queen, Black gains a tempo with a normal knight developing move and my queen is not quite in the best place, even if it can't be attacked by anything. On move 3, there are a range of other moves that are good according to evaluation, and good according to win ratio on the Lichess community database of lower-rated games of blitz and rapid. Apart from d4, there is also:
- 3. Bd4 (moving the bishop to its natural square)
- 3. Nf3 (entering a Two Knights Italian type game - boo!)
- 3. f4 (a spicy Vienna Gambit type move that had a good win ratio), and,
- 3. g3 (a "Modern" Vienna approach that I haven't explored much at all but is apparently quite good).
Nonetheless, I played my usual as I had these musings in game, traded pawns, and Black developed their knight with tempo as expected (3. d4 exd4 4. Qxd4 Nc6). Here, I knew from previous analysis that moving the to (5. Qd3) was technically best, though Qe3 and Qd1 are also fine and almost the same. Each move has some disadvantages. Qd3 places the queen at a future Nb4 attack. Qe3 blocks in the dark square bishop. Qd1 undevelops the queen. After thinking for almost a minute, I decided to try something unsound in this game, and played Qa4, pinning the knight to the king. I knew that this was probably suboptimal, and it was as Stockfish called it an inaccuracy with an evaluation of [0.00], but I wanted to see what would happen. Black deflected the attack, and I ended up trading my light square bishop for their knight, but Black ends up developing the bishop in the process. Yep, I ended up a bit worse [-0.3] so this is not a line to pursue!
As the game progressed, Black made some inaccuracies of their own. After castling long, they attempted to develop their queen. However, my pieces and position were mostly solid, and I managed to gain some tempo chasing their queen. With my queen in the field of play on the b-file, I manoeuvred the middle game towards getting my pieces into a queenside attack and potentially had some initiative. Finally, on move 18, I won a major concession with Black losing their a-pawn completely, leading to a permanent structural weakness on that side!
On move 20, I managed to skewer Black's queen and rook along the long dark square diagonal, so now, winning a good material advantage! The tactic was now to attack the e8 square with my rooks and queen. There was a potential forced trade in pieces, which would result in an easily winning endgame for me. A few moves later (25. Re7) - rooks are powerful on the seventh (and second) ranks and in fact, I missed a [+M4]. I considered the move but didn't calculate all the way. I stuck to my existing tactic of attacking e8 and forcing trades which worked. On move 30 (30. Qxe8+), I forced a completely winning endgame of queen vs bishop. Although I needed to be careful, Black resigned on move 36 with impending checkmate next turn. GG!
Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/78198692861
