If possible, I move my knight to g5. Thinking that I’m going to attack f7 with either my knight or bishop, the black player will almost always inevitably castle king side from this position, as so:
In response to them castling, I move my h-file pawn to h4, and black typically responds by moving their h-file pawn to h6, to threaten my knight on g5. Now the position generally looks like this.
Now here’s where things get interesting….
(Strategy continued below - will post as soon as I can)
Rather than move my knight, I leave him there. In fact, I WANT his pawn to take my knight, for reasons I’ll show later. So instead of moving my knight, I’ll often move my pawn to d3, which will open up a path for my dark bishop and back up my knight on g5.
Really experienced players will usually recognize the trap and refrain from taking my knight, at least right away. This will necessitate me making other follow-up moves involving perhaps my dark bishop (to e3), light bishop (to b3), or queen-side knight (to d5), depending on what black does next. This will maintain my position of my king-side knight being threatened at g5, and still enable me to continue with this strategy should black take my knight with their pawn on h6 within the next couple moves.
However, for the sake of simplicity, let’s say they go for it and take my knight on g5. My follow-up move will then be to take their pawn on g5 using my pawn on h4.
Now the black knight on f6 is threatened while the h-file is completely open to my rook on h1! The king is now also isolated on that side since black castled a few moves back. The position at this point looks like this:
(Strategy continued below….will post later)
At this point, black will usually move their knight, often to h7. I counter by moving my queen to h5, and it’s mate in 1!
One of the things that’s beautiful with this strategy is that one of the primary defenses (moving the pawn on f7 so the black king can escape) is not available due to the black knight blocking it, my light bishop at c4, or both. And there are two squares I can move my queen to and achieve checkmate: h7 and h8, which makes it impossible to stop once the queen makes it safely to the h-file. So they could move their pawn on g7, their queen, their king-side rook or anything else, but it won’t matter. Either way, it’s CHECKMATE:
The easiest route to victory is getting your white queen to h5, but you can still use this strategy if your queen can get to h2, h3, or h4, which might be necessary if black makes the right countermoves. It may take longer, but you can still pull it off. The important thing is just to have the h-file open for your queen and rook to be lined up. In the worst-case scenario where black doesn’t take the bait and take your knight, I’ve still found it an advantageous position to have your knight and h-file pawn up there, which black will have to allow if they want to prevent this series of moves. And they will have to pay greater attention to that side of the board even with good countermoves.
Granted I’m not an “expert” player or anything, but I’ve caught many opponents by surprise using this strategy and achieved early victory by playing white aggressively in this manner and black castling early.
Now for my question 😀….does this technique or series of moves have a name to it? Anyone know? 🤔 Thanks in advance and hope you enjoyed the write-up. 👍🏻
Hey there, folks. I don’t study chess strategy much, I just like to play. My rating’s usually in the 1300s or low 1400s.
I’ve often employed this strategy to pretty good success, but I’m sure I’m not the first person to do this. Anyone know what this is called, or if there’s an official name?
Basically, it goes something like this:
Playing as white, I typically start with my queen side knight to c3, although moving the king’s pawn to f4 would also work as an opener. The important thing is to open a path for the light bishop to move to c4 and threaten black’s pawn on f7. I then move my king side knight to f3. After the first few moves, the position of the board typically looks like this:
(Strategy continued below…)