#chess #quickwins #chesstraps #queensac
➡️ Buy my book "50+2 Chess Quick Wins: Tactical ideas for exciting chess for beginner players"!
US: www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJ3VVW9M
UK: www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CJ3VVW9M
AU: www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0CJ44YJ2M
➡️ Blog for full articles and PGN: adventuresofachessnoob.com/?p...
In this episode of chess noob Quick Wins, we’re going to have a look back at the lovely von Hennig Gambit by White, against Black’s Caro-Kann Defense (1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Bc4!?). We’d recently covered one line of the von Hennig recently but it’s been two years since I first covered the “famous” 8-move checkmate. I was inspired as earlier in the week, I managed to pull this off again, along with another von Hennig quick win game, which I’ll cover next week!
The wonderful thing about this 8-move checkmate is that every single move by Black appears to be a natural and reasonable move. From the position, the single most common response by Black to the von Hennig Gambit is (4… Nf6), developing a knight to a normal square, and defending their pawn now on e4 from recapture by White’s c3-knight.
White’s next move immediately pressures that e4-pawn with (5. f3), adding as second attacker. Black will likely (and correctly) calculate that it is difficult to defend the pawn. Uncommonly, they might try with (5… Bf5) but as we saw in the aforementioned article and video from a fortnight ago, Black can get aggressively attacked with (6. g4)! The most common response by Black is to capture down the chain (5… exf3), win a second pawn and acknowledge that they’ll will give one back. This nonetheless consolidates the material advantage.
White now captures the pawn with development (6. Nxf3) and we see the logic to the gambit. White has given up a point of material, but Black moved the same pawn three times in the opening, which now evaporates from the board. White gains an excellent relative advantage in development - three pieces developed to natural squares, a pawn in the centre, and reading to castle kingside. Black, on the other hand, has only a single piece developed, no pawns in the centre, and at least three moves away from castling. In this position, Black will be strongly drawn towards developing another minor piece. However, the king’s bishop is stuck behind the d7-pawn, and the queen’s knight’s “natural” square of c6 is occupied by the Caro-Kann pawn. Thus, the most natural piece to move will be the queen’s (light square) bishop and indeed, this piece is the most moved in the position. But to which square? There are only two sensible looking candidate positions; to f5 or to g4. At the beginner-intermediate level, Black will almost certainly be drawn towards playing (6… Bg4) as it seemingly pins White’s f3-knight to the queen! If the goal of the move was to regain tempo, this seems like a very reasonable move!
However, this critical move is a blunder! White now has the audacious (7. Ne5)! It counterattacks Black’s g4-bishop but looks like an “oh no, my queen!” mistake! Did White miss the fact that it was pinned and has now hung their queen?! Of course, this is a trap and much of the success of this trap line is thus in psychological tactics - it comes down to whether White was able to construct a flow such that Black doesn’t suspect, and hence look for the trap! If Black played (6… Bg4??) in the first place, objectively a bad move, the conditional probability is that Black doesn’t already know the line. If Black is unable to resist the allure of the “free” queen and captures (7… Bxd1), then White has the immediate stunning checkmate with (8. Bxf7#)!
A historical note:
Devious trickery involving an “oh no, my queen!” trap have been played in chess for hundreds of years. Like in my game, these involve a degree of psychological sophistication to pull off successfully, and the best example that I’m aware of is the game by French chess master François Antoine de Légal de Kermeur, master of the famous Café de la Régence, where he plays his eponymous line, The Legal Trap: (de Légal - Saint Brie, 1750, Paris France).
On move 4, Saint Brie plays (4… Bg4) pinning de Légal’s knight to the queen, a good move. De Légal, pretends to have accidentally touched the knight, pulling his hand back. Saint Brie notices, and gleefully points out the touch move rule. De Légal, trolling Saint Brie, acts to regretfully move the knight (5. Nxe5), and of course the rest is history! Saint Brie, captures the queen, temporarily elated, thinking himself as winning against the best chess player in France. De Légal then shows him why he’s the boss of the Café de la Régence, executing one of the most beautiful checkmate patterns in all of chess!
----
Hep Cats by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-...
Artist: incompetech.com/
28 июн 2024
