CHECKMATE in 8! Napoleon Attack - chess noob Quick Wins! #6

#NapoleonAttack 

chess noob Quick Wins! is a new series of short videos, to demonstrate very quick wins!  As a beginner, you become aware of the Scholar's Mate and the Fool's Mate, but neither of these show up in real games.  However, there are tricky quick checkmates and wins that occur, even at the intermediate level of chess.

Napoleon Bonaparte was quite a keen chess player.  I feel some affinity for him as the historical accounts are that he wasn't very good!  Although the story may be apocryphal, the "Napoleon Attack", which is named after him, is also not very good and gives chess noob vibes.

The Napoleon Attack is an early queen move right after the king's pawn opening (1. e4 e5 2. Qf3).  Stockfish gives this a rating of around [-0.5] so this is pretty much an error from the beginning and there isn't much trickiness in it either.  I develop my queen's knight (2... Nc6) as the White queen can potentially be attacked by bringing the knight to d4.

My opponent next brings out their bishop (3. Bc4) attempting to set up a Scholar's Mate.  I counterattack aggressively by bringing out my own queen to the f-file (3... Qf6), which neutralises their checkmate attempt and asks the question on whether they want to trade queens.  If they take, it's a queen-less game, but I end up gaining a tempo be recapturing the queen with a natural knight developing move to f3.

Instead, my opponent baulks, pulling their queen to e2, which is a mistake [-3] as my knight was already ready to jump to d4 (4. Qe2 Nd4), attacking the queen and the c2 pawn (which comes with a fork of the king and rook).  White moves the queen for a third time in the opening (5. Qd1), back to its starting square to protect c2.

Feeling evil, I now develop my own bishop to prepare for a reverse Scholar's Mate of my own (5... Bc5).  White doesn't see it, and on move 8, my queen captures the f2 pawn with checkmate!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/19219578401