Vienna Game | Giraffe-ish Queen in the Max Lange Defense?!
#vienna #maxlange #zhuravlev #giraffe
This was a rapid game that I played using my Chessnut Air. On the video reviews, I'm going to experiment with reviewing games played on the Chessnut Air using the 3D chessboard view as it gives a better sense of how the game "looked" and "felt" live!
This was an interesting game of the Vienna Game: Max Lange Defense (1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nc6) where my opponent played an aggressive early "Zhuravlev" bishop (3... Bb4), which allowed me to play the "Giraffe-ish Queen" counterattack (4. Qg4) (https://www.chess.com/blog/vitualis/awesome-giraffe-ish-response-to-the-zhuravlev-countergambit-vienna-game).
My opponent played well and played a great move 7 (7. Nxe4). In this position, I had only one move that maintained equality. Can you find the move White needed to play?
The move to find was (8. Nxe5), seemingly hanging the queen! However, the line continues where White is able win Black's queen with a skewer, or, force a draw through perpetual check! (8. Nxe5 Nxg3 9. Bxf7+ Kf8 10. Bh6+ Ke7 11. Bg5+)
Needless to say, I did not find this move and played (8. Qh4), which was the second-best move, trading queens. However, Black has a substantial advantage of almost [-3].
However, the Giraffe-ish Queen did it's job by inducing a permanent dark square weakness on Black's kingside; jamming my dark square bishop on h6 (10. Bh6) prevented Black from castling kingside. A few moves later, Black lost sight of the dark square diagonal backwards with the bishop in an unusual position, and hung their knight making forward progress (12... Nd2 13. Bxd2).
With opposite-side castling, my strategy was relatively clear. Queenside pawn storm and attack! Black's bishop ended up getting trapped against the advancing pawns. With Black down two pieces and the evaluation at better than [+9], it was simply my game to win. The position was still relatively closed - Black had seven pawns remaining while I had six. The late-middle game start was my knight, who made four consecutive moves to infiltrate Black's position.
On move 34, Black, about to lose one of their rooks without compensation, opted to resign. GG!
Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/70066973431
