a fun trap

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Roman_AGA

I know that this one was risky, but it was a fast game. Is there a name for this queen sacrifice trap? I was happy to have had the chance to use it in a game. It was a lot of fun, what do you think?

Qxe8

Yep, it's called Legal's Mate (I'm not sure if I got the name right). You're really lucky to get it in a game.

emceenugget

I've pulled this off once and was very proud of myself, as I feel that it's a very hard mate to pull off.  It is an easy situation to come across, but if your opponent is aware of the threat, most of the time you will lose a piece.  I ran into while reading up on different mating patterns and decided to look into this one further.  I noticed that if your opponent moves either Nc6 or Nf6 and is aware of what you are attempting, then you are at a disadvantage.  Your opponent moved his Knights off of both these squares, and you did a great job taking advantage.  Here are a couple examples in very simple form.

These first two examples show how a wary opponent can easily deter the mate with either Knight in place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EDIT: I had a diagram showing a positive situation for White, but it turned out that it wasn't one!  This really is a difficult mate to pull off if your opponent is aware of it!  So instead, I placed a variation I saw on a website that puts White up a pawn.

shuttlechess92

I think the point of legal's mate is to take advantage of  a passive move, which would be the move h3

gardelin
ROMAN_RR wrote:

I know that this one was risky, but it was a fast game. Is there a name for this queen sacrifice trap? I was happy to have had the chance to use it in a game. It was a lot of fun, what do you think?

 


It was not risky at all - it was the best move at given position because his bishop on g4 is loose and if he took the night with 11...dxe5 you just take the bishop with queen, so you got one pawn for free and all together you are about two pawns up with material.

This kind of queen sac would be risky only with black N/c6 because if black takes your N/e5 with N/c6 then you have just lost a piece because his B/g4 is now protected by N/e5.