Scandalous Scandinavian

You deserved the win.  Half the game he had a fork on your rooks, but you did not give up and continued the attack.  Bxh3.  Brilliant! Great game!

Cheers! I was happy to emerge from the chaos with victory 🙂

Wow... great game! I know I am a lower rated player, so this will probably sound stupid, but why is bxh3 brilliant?

Thanks. Bxh3 is not really a brilliant move, it's just that the previous moves have committed me to play it. The whole plan is dubious at best. At that point Bf5 retreat is not really an option with all sorts of Nf3 jumps with a discovered attack on my queen so Bxf3 is the other choice. White then recaptures Bxf3, I have to move my queen and it's just nice for white. So the options are either be worse or make this Bxh3 sac and get 2 pawns for the Bishop, expose the white King and rely on the fact that it's just a mess and that white will have to navigate it accurately. 

its blitz,

It is fully justifiable.

He had to solve a lot of problems.

30 minute game. I used a lot of that time trying to find the most testing/tricky continuations.

30 minutes.  That changes things a bit.  His king is exposed but Ng5 and Nxf7 controls the d6 square for the bishop which is the only plausible continuation after the bishop sacrifice on h3.  Yes, then it was too especulative without the tactics to justify it.

Yeah I played Bc5 so if knight takes rook I had Qg3+ forcing a draw. There must be a way for white to be winning somewhere.

That's great and the bish sac wasn't unsound at all - more Tal-like. I mean, we're playing humans so there's engine evaluation on the one hand, but then there's criticality. And it's going through the roof.

An early Ng4 would have won you the knight because after Bxg4 Qxg4+ and Nd4, he has to cover f3 with Nd2, and you get Qf4+ Qxf7. Gotta check all those upcoming queen+knight intersection squares.

Also, Qxh2+ wins after Kxh2 Nxf1+ to Nxe3, picking up both rook and queen for a knight. No need to sac 'em! You're a gambler, it's a nice lesson for those all looking to play 'correct' chess though.

Some people say Scandinavian is a bad opening, even worse than Albin Counter Gambit. In Rapid, I only played it when my rating was 1400-1500, including 2 games that led me to reach 1500 for the 1st time. Since then, despite quite frequent success in my previous Rapid using Scandi, I have been playing it only in Blitz and Bullet where my rating is still low.

There is a post in Legend club forum about how to play against Scandi, where the poster displayed some examples for white to make traps to destroy black. Because of that, I don't play it in Rapid anymore.

Here, at the level of 1900+, you played Scandi with no worry about risk some people say. Now, my mind may change. 🤔

My knowledge is somewhat superficial...I am aware that there are specific lines for white which lead to bad things for black. Of course I have lost horribly before in this opening but I prefer to share the wins here 😆. I find difficulties when white plays Bd2 lining up against Qa5 for example. Anyway, all us amateurs are playing for enjoyment and if my white opponents outplay me and know more than me about the nuances of this opening then too bad, I have to take it on the chin. I encourage you to explore different ways of playing and don't be too concerned about accuracy and correctness and all that boring stuff. Sometimes the opponent finds the right moves, sometimes they don't.

Unrelated to the games, I just realized your username is basically the reverse of mine.

It's kind of funny how all these players do almost the same thing then get hit by the Qh5/Bxh3 combo.

I understand.

As for white's Bd2, we could just play c6 so that our queen can move to c7 or d8. This is the most frequent line I have encountered in my games using this risky but exciting.

In my recent Blitz games using Caro-Kann opening that deviated from common lines, it quite often transposed to Scandi in almost similar variation, thanks to my knowledge in Scandi.

Cool game!

grandmasters tend to rate it as one of the most SOLID replies by black. I know it was in at least 1 top 10 openings list. me? I'm sick and tired of it because it's too positional for me, especially after 2.e5 forces a transposition into the advanced sicilian.

i think too that scandinavian players, like sicilians, can be a tricky lot! i've had a VERY hard time trying to find a line against the scandinavian that works for me.

DESPITE its solid results with everyone else, I did poorly transposing to the blackmar diemer gambit (1.e4 d5 2.d4 exd4 3.Nc3) and have gotten better results playing the gedult BDG going straight to f3, which gets declined less, but even then, taking most scandinavians WAY out of familiar territory, they often find REALLY strong counters.

me? i want to learn the more combative rousseau & related ...f5 counter gambits