My Favorite Miniatures

A Miniature is a game lasting 25 moves or less. Grandmaster draws (which are draws with only a few moves played) and time forfeits are excluded. Ideally, they should be both educational and/or entertaining.

Feel free to post your favorite miniatures. They could be by you, or a favorite player of yours. Discussion of the games is also encouraged. (But please no bughouse or 960 games. Let's just try to post the classical game.)

Thanks!

And have fun!

Here's a good one from MacDonnell, a 19th century English player.

There are some games worth playing over and over again. This is one of them.

I believe this game was the shortest ever played in the US Chess Championships.

 Good one Blue! =)

Who was your opponent and when was it played?

That's not mine. It was played at the height of the Cold War, in Bulgaria in 1962 between two almost-unknown Soviet-block masters, Yuri Troinov and Luben Popov. Because of the poor political relations at the time, many of the games from that period are virtually unknown here in the West.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1503130

This is one of mine, an off-hand game that was played between rounds at an over-the-board tournament about 30 years ago, in the Canadian Maritimes.

Cool!

I didn't know either of the two games. Thanks for showing both!

Here's a miniature that I played right here on chess.com. The only really cool point (from my point of view) was at move eight, where I found a "new" piece sacrifice right in the opening. It later turned out that the move had been played before, but I was still quite pleased to have found it over-the-board.

I was living in Los Angeles and experimenting with the Grand Prix Attack at this time. You can label this game as, "The Two Long Diagonals".

(For some reason I am having trouble inserting this game in the post. Agggh! So we will just have to post the game as this way. Apologies to all! =)

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Escalante-N.N.
Blitz Game
Pasadena, Aug. 17 1990
1.e4 c5 2.f4 d6 3.Nf3 Nd7 {This move only makes the weak f7 square even more of a target.} 4.Bc4 {White lays claim to the important a2 to g8 diagonal and directly hitting the f7 square.} 4...g6 {A move that is too slow and does nothing to challenge the a2 to g8 diagonal.} 5.O-O Bg7 6.d4 cxd4 7.Nxd4 Qb6 8.Be3 Qxb2 {Remember the commandment about not taking the b2 pawn with the queen? Here is another reason why this commandment should not be broken as the both the main diagonal (a1 to h8), and the d4 square is dominated by White. And Black has yet to challenge the a2 to g8 diagonal.} 9.f5 Qxa1 {If 9...Bxd4, then 10.Bxd4! wins} 10.fxg6! {Now it’s all over for Black as both diagonals are available for White.} fxg6 {Best for Black is 10...Ngf6. But even in this line, 11.gxf7+ Kf8 12.Ne6+ Kxf7 13.Bd4 wins again.} 11.Bf7+ Kd8 12.Ne6# 1-0

Sometimes lower rated players can produce some interesting miniatures.

Here's one to enjoy!

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[White’s knights have a field day attacking the opposite queen and taking loose pawns. They then sacrifice themselves so their queen can mate.]

 johnsmith,

I usually have good results playing against ...e6 and ...b6 systems. It seems to be a combination of the French and Owen;s Defences; not really accomplishing much except for presenting weaknesses and giving the time for White to exploit those weaknesses.

Ooohh- From's Gambit!

And nicely played! =)

 MawarBerdarah,

Did you play this game? Interesting that Black has to trade his well-placed bishop for a knight on t he 10th move.

Some time ago I was experimenting with the Alekhine's Defence (1.e4 Nf6). I esp.  wanted to explore the Four Pawns Attack, but it seems many players avoided it like the plague.

But I still remembered much of the theory.

Here is a game showing the point to score a point.

OK, having same problems with server.

Here is the game with notes.

Just copy and paste the game into a PGN reader if you can't play it blindfolded.  

Escalante-“Krazy1234” X25
Smart Phone Game, July-Aug., 2016
[Escalante]
1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 d6 4.c4 Nb6 5.f4 g5 6.d5 gxf4 7.Bxf4 Bf5 8.Nf3 h6 9.Nh4 e6 {9...Bh7 10.e6 fxe6 11.dxe6 Qc8 12.Be2 Qxe6 13.O-O Nxc4 14.Bg4} 10.Nxf5 {+/-} exf5 11.Bd3 Rg8 12.O-O N8d7 13.e6 Nf6 14.exf7+ Kxf7 15.Bxf5 {+/-, but now almost winning.} Nxc4 16.Be6+ Kg7 17.Qc1! Rh8 18.Qxc4 Be7 19.Nc3 Nh5 20.Be3 Rf8 21.Qg4+ Bg5 22.h4 Nf6 23.Bd4 1-0 {White has a piece, two pins, and all the attacking chances; Black has nothing.}

Recently I ordered some chess state magazines from the 1970s from Ebay.

Here is one of the little gems I found.