How Carlsen Crushed a GM with the Scandinavian!
How did the World Champion, Magnus Carlsen, smash a fellow Grandmaster with the Scandinavian, getting a completely winning position by move 10?
I show you how he did it in my latest Grandmaster video lesson, walking you through the game.
Click here to study my video analysis of Carlsen's win!
As a bonus, I'd also like to share a really great post that Frederick Rhine made in 'The Chess Improvement Group', which will teach you more key ideas for employing the Portuguese successfully in your own games!
It's an amazing story of how Portugal's top player, Rui Damaso, beat two top Chinese players of the time with his pet opening!
Over to Frederick:
One of the greatest stories in chess history involves the Portuguese Variation of the Scandinavian Defense. In 1996, a match-tournament was held in Macau between the best Chinese and Portuguese players. In Round 3 one of the Chinese grandmasters, Ye Jiangchuan (2560), had White against Rui Damaso (2415), a little-known Portuguese IM. Damaso played a very rarely seen "Brand X" opening, 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Nf6 3.d4 Bg4!? Ye, who had probably never seen it before, reacted with the quiet 4.Be2, not trying to refute the line. Damaso castled queenside, launched a furious attack against Ye's king, and checkmated him on move 29. A very flashy game - Damaso even underpromoted to a knight! https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1150482
Stung by this defeat, the Chinese prepared assiduously for Damaso's garbage opening. If he dared to play this trash again, they would punish him! They got their chance in Round 7. Another of their GMs, Wang Zili (2540), was White against IM Damaso. Sure enough, Damaso played the same goofy line again. Wang Zili rolled out what he and his teammates had prepared. The result was indeed brutal. Damaso checkmated his second Chinese GM, this time in 13 moves!! https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1305957
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If 2500+ rated players struggled to deal with this opening in two tries, then your opponents can certainly struggle against Black's blunt opening aggression as well!
See you in the next post, chess family!
