Whimsical Quick Wins x 4 | Romantic Chess, FTW! 😸♟️
#quickwins #romantic #fun
Recently, I’ve had almost a couple of weeks off work: the Easter long weekend, and then attending the WONCA (World Organization of Family Doctors) 2025 Asia-Pacific Regional Conference, held this year in Busan, South Korea. I’ve had a great time attending the academic program, especially listening to new research findings, as well as discussions on health policy issues and directions.
However, what I most enjoy from professional conference attendance, and what I would argue to be one of the most important benefits, is the opportunity to network with like-minded colleagues, especially leaders within the field.
As part of the trip, I had planned to record an “out and about” video with my travel Chessnut GO set at a really cool town in Busan, the Gamcheon Culture Village.
This is another must visit location, especially if you like cats! It’s a unique site with many whimsical artistic installations.
I’d found a wonderfully scenic location for the game, a table with benches surrounded by stylised feline murals, under the shade of a tree. I was a bit rushed as it was later in the afternoon, and it was starting to get a bit chilly. In my haste, I didn’t double check the framing of the camera screen before I recorded the video. Unfortunately, this rendered the footage unusable, as around half of the board in the angle was cut off… Oh well! 😅
Instead, I’m going to show a handful of recent “quick wins” type games over my break that celebrates the Romantic and whimsical spirit of Gamcheon Culture Village. Let’s go! 🤩👍
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This was a very funny game of the Max Lange Vienna Gambit (1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3. f4) where my opponent with the black pieces decided to play snap “copy cat” responses, so (3… f5?) giving an interesting symmetrical pawn cube on turn 3!
They continued with the copy cat tactic (4. fxe5 fxe4 5. Nxe4 Nxe5) but a thing to know is that this approach will always fail for Black as White has the advantage of going first! The symmetry broke on turn 6 as I had (6. Qh5+), an absolute fork of Black’s king and e5-knight, a forcing move. Why forcing? Black has only a single correct move available, which was the backwards knight move (6… Ng6).
For reasons unclear to me, they didn’t play this and erroneously stepped their king out of check (6… Ke7??). As can sometimes be the case with the open centre files (a theme in this series of games) in the Vienna Gambit, this gives a cascade of attacks and the weaving of a mating net. In this game, a very lovely Royal Fork checkmate arrived on turn 10 with (10. Nf7#). Lovely! 😚🤌
The second game started as a Falkbeer Vienna Gambit Accepted (1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. f4 exf4?). However, in a moment of whimsy, rather than playing the correct and typical (4. e5), a winning move, I decided to try (4. Nf3), which transposes into the King’s Gambit Accepted: Schallopp Defense. This is a position that has been played by the 19th century masters including, of course, Schallopp, but also Chigorin, Steinitz, and Blackburne. In fact, Blackburne voluntarily entered this position from the Vienna Gambit!
Black doesn’t play confidently in the opening, with some hesitant moves (4… d6, and 6… a6), mixed with unbalanced aggression (5… Bg4). On turn 7, I saw the potential for a tricky attack (7. e5)! Stockfish didn’t like it, but I thought that it was forcing with a predictable transformation that was beneficial for me.
And it happened! After the central pawn trades (7… dxe5 8. dxe5), the d-file was fully opened with the queens staring at each other across the board (as noted before: open centre files are a theme of this article). After the queen trade (8… Qxd1+ 9. Rxd1), my d1-rook controlled the file and Black’s king is at risk of being trapped in the centre. There’s also the potential for an unexpected early checkmate!
This immediately became available after (9… Nh5 10. Bg5!?). My rook and bishop had created a mating net, but the repositioning of the bishop was seemingly “caused” by Black’s knight’s attack. An important part of playing “psychologically” is realising that people are not computers, even if they “calculate” positions. Rather, they create narratives in their mind, effectively, they tell themselves stories to provide explanations of why a piece is in a specific position. Black likely told themselves that my bishop had moved from the f4 to g6 square due to their knight move, and as such, looked no further into the significance of the move. Recognising that people can have these biases is the basis of traps!
Black indeed missed the checkmate-in-one and so with (11. Rd8#), I had a lovely combination with my rook and bishop. Good game, GG! 🤩👍
The Smith-Morra Gambit is one of the best approaches against the unprepared Sicilian player (1. e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4 3. c3 dxc3). My opponent wanted to play a Dragon Sicilian and attempted to continue down that structure (5… g6) but this led to their first understandable looking blunder with (8… d5??) attempting to challenge the centre. Just like the other games, this created a tactical opportunity for me with a very early opened centre file!
After the pawn trade (9. exd5 exd5), I played a rather tricky move (10. Rd1!?), seemingly pinning Black’s d-pawn to their queen, which Stockfish evaluates as a serious mistake. However, there was a method to the madness! What was Black’s tactical narratives to themselves? I had predicted that Black had seen that their c6-knight would be able to jump to the a5 square for an attack on my queen on b3, and that they were “holding it in reserve”. However, this erroneous belief meant that the step of tempo they believed they had, could instead be used by me, turning a powerful attack into a checkmate!
Black pulled the pin with (11. Na5??), hitting my queen, but in doing so, hung a very lovely checkmate-in-two! Firstly, (12. Bxf7+) a check and revealing the fully open d-file. Black’s king is forced to f8, and my rook flies across the board, capturing the queen to deliver a back rank mate (13. Rxd8#). 😚🤌
This last game is my favourite and the most recent from the list. I had the black pieces and like the other games, played off-beat whimsical moves in the openings to see whether I could get an edge, and to see where the game would take me!
It started with the Center Game (1. e4 e5 2. d4), but rather than capturing with the usual exd4, I played (2… Nc6) instead to take White out of their expectation, and transposing the game to the Nimzowitsch Defense. Rather than pushing the aggression, White opted to safely transpose the game back to a Scotch (3. Nf3), and after (3… exd4 4. Nxd4), I decided to once again play something different. Normally, I respond with (4. Qh4), the Steinitz Variation. But on this day, I just had a feeling, and so opted for (4… Nf6), the Schmidt Variation instead!
And I was rewarded with (5. Nxc5) and the opportunity to play the tricky (5… dxc6!?). The opening principle is that it’s better to capture towards the centre so (5… bxc6) is more accurate. However, like the other games, there is something unexpected, provocative, and Romantic to fully open the d-file on turn 5, have the queens look at each other, and force your opponent to react! 🤪
White blinked, and the manoeuvre successfully prompted them to make an error with (6. Qe2?)! My queen now controlled the open d-file and my tactic was to attack White’s weak f2 square. I was delighted to see and then successfully implement a rather lovely trap to capture White’s queen with a two-step dancing knight attack (8… Ng4!).
White had only a single move to save their queen (9. Be3) but didn’t see it. With (9… Bxf2+), White’s best option was to trade their queen for my two minor pieces (10. Qxf2 Nxf2 11. Kxf2), not something that is easy to accept.
Instead, they play the very human (10. Kd2??). This fails, as my knight leaps forward again with the surprising (10. Ne3+), which almost seems like checkmate! White’s only legal move is to trade their queen for the attacking knight… If the previous trade of the queen for TWO pieces was unacceptable, then this forced trade is emotional damage! White resigned, good game, GG!
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Play for fun. Try unexpected whimsical moves in the opening. Play Romantic chess!
— Michael Tam (@vitualis the chess noob)
Learn how to play the best chess opening attacks in the Romantic style with my new book, “Become a Chess Assassin!”, and read more stories about interesting historical chess masters from the past! Available now on your local Amazon store:
