WINNING Queen & Knight Strike Team!
#SicilianDefense #SmithMorraGambit
There is a special synergy when the queen and knight work together. The queen is the single most powerful piece, attacking in all directions. Although the knight is a weaker piece, it has a superpower in that it can leap over other pieces, and attacks squares in a pattern that are in the gaps of the queen's range. Together, they make the perfect assassination squad against an enemy king!
I played White in this game, and we entered the Sicilian Defense: Smith-Morra Gambit, Accepted (1. e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4). On move 10, I blunder a move (10. bxc3). To try to defend the b-pawn, I end up blundering my rook two turns later as Black infiltrates with their queen and my rook is trapped in the corner.
At this point, I knew that I was losing, but saw an opportunity. My rook wasn't in play before its demise, so the loss won't be immediately felt. At the same time, Black's very active queen is now relatively inactive on the a1 square - it'll need a move or two to get out. More than that, I had three active pieces, queen, knight, and bishop, ready to attack Black's king which had castled short. All of Black's pieces were on the queenside, on the wrong side of my diagonal palisade of pawns that divided the board in two.
An immediate and aggressive attack on the Black king, even if the attack is unbalanced, can be an effective tactic. Under constant pressure, it is common to induce inaccuracies and importantly, these errors can sometimes be fatal.
Move 13, the knight plants itself forward (13. Ng5) placing pressure on the f7 and g7 squares, with an immediate checkmate threat against h7. The single good move for Black isn't easy to find (13... f5) as it seems like an unsound weakening of the king's defences. Black plays the second-best move, which is already a blunder (13... g6). The queen now swings around to the h-file (14. Qh5), attacking the h7 square again! Stockfish calls this move a blunder and it is of course, correct. However, in a game between (beginner-intermediate rated) humans, I felt like I was winning, and I suspect that Black was sweating. They spent longer and longer in deciding each move.
Black survived the first round of the attack. However, after a shuffle with the queen that effectively reset the positions of the Black king and rook, the second round of the attack was unstoppable. GG!
Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/62401799663
