chess noob Game Review! #1 Vienna Game
#ViennaGame
I’m starting a new series of videos, “chess noob Game Review” where the focus will be on identifying in how a game, whether I win or lose, could have been improved. This gives me an opportunity to reflect more deeply about a game and hopefully, the lessons that I draw for myself will be helpful to my fellow beginner and beginner-intermediate chess players!
Not surprisingly, the first game in this series will be a Vienna Game (1. e4 e5 2. Nc3). My opponent responds by defending their e5 pawn with the d-pawn (2… d6), and in this variation, developing the king’s bishop (3. c4) is a sensible (and best) move. My opponent perhaps plays defensively, pushing their c-pawn next (3… c6), potentially looking for a fight over the d5 square.
I’ve played enough games of the Vienna that I know that Stockfish’s preference here is to develop the second knight immediately (4. Nf3). However, that draws the game into an Italian-like positional game that isn’t my favourite. Generally, I prefer open and bombastic games and thus I choose to play (4. d3), opening the dark square diagonal for my bishop, and preparing for f4. When I play the Vienna, I like to place my king’s knight behind the pawn, potentially trading away the f-pawn to have a semi-open f-file for my rook after king-side castling.
This overall strategic intent works out and on move 7, my opponent makes the first mistake according to Stockfish [+2.22] by developing their light square bishop (7… Bg4) attempting to pin my knight to the queen. Here, I castle, which was an inaccuracy. There is an opportunity to immediately attack the light bishop with (8. h3). Interestingly, Stockfish’s best choice for Black is to undevelop the bishop back to c8! The bishop can be placed on several different squares, all of which are somewhere between [+2] and [+3] in evaluation.
I do play (9. h3) the next turn and my opponent moves the bishop back (9… Bh5) maintaining the pin. Stockfish now boldly recommends an immediate attack on the bishop (10. g4) as the best move. However, I’m not sure that at the beginner-intermediate level, this is a good idea. Playing g4 substantially weakens the defence of the White king. Stockfish can see an ongoing series of attacks into the Black king’s position that tactically justifies the move. However, if we take the pragmatic position that we will likely play an inaccurate move or an inaccuracy, then it’s kind of like investing in a glass cannon. If (and when?!) we blunder, it might be disastrous.
I slid my queen over (10. Qe1) which although Stockfish calls a mistake, is within the top 3 or 4 moves. This unpinned my knight and set my queen up to access the g-file, which is where the Black king will end up being after castling, which occurred immediately afterwards.
In this part of the game, there were a series of consecutive mistakes or blunders on both sides. My opponent placed their light square bishop to g6, presumably as a tactical defence of their h-pawn by unpinning their g-pawn. However, this doesn’t work as the f-pawn is pinned to the king by my bishop on c4, meaning that the light square bishop on g6 is hanging. Neither of us recognise this tactical advantage for a couple of turns, resulting in some consecutive blunders. In this chaos, I also miss the opponent’s discovered attack on my knight with the opponent’s queen and dark square bishop in a battery, resulting in me hanging and losing my knight (13… Bxh4).
This material loss was the shock I needed to “wake up” from the fuzzy headed playing! I was sure that was objectively losing in the game (and on analysis, Stockfish agreed with an evaluation of [-2.79]), so I formed an evil idea in my mind! At this point, I realised that my opponent, like me up to this point, didn’t recognise that their f7 pawn was pinned. This meant that they likely thought that their king was better guarded than the reality. So, I played a seemingly desperate Greek-gift sacrifice (14. Bxh6), taking out the opponent’s h-pawn. This is objectively a mistake [-5.98], but like the scenario in a recent video (https://www.chess.com/blog/vitualis/is-this-move-a-blunder-or-brilliant), a move can be objectively bad but psychologically brilliant in the right context!
My opponent had originally placed their bishop on g6 in the mistaken assumption that it prevented the very move I had just made. This made the move (14. Bxh6) an irresistible gambit and my opponent took the bait capturing the bishop with their g-pawn (14… gxh6). This was a game-changing blunder – from [-5.98] to [+12.7] – as my opponent had just stripped away the key to their defence. My next move must have been a shock (15. Qxg6+), with the queen revealing the facade of the Black king’s defences! I now had three pieces staring at the pinned f7 and I was hunting for the checkmate.
Inexplicably, I missed a checkmate on move 20 and I’ve had to reflect on why I missed it. In my mind, I think I had dismissed the possibility of there being a quick mate because I couldn’t see one earlier, and instead, focussed on short-term tactical goals – trying to find moves that came with check as “forcing” moves, ensuring that there weren’t accidental forks or discovered attacks against my pieces especially with my opponent having a couple of knights, and trying to regain material. With over 20 minutes on the clock in a 30-min rapid game, there really are no excuses for missing this obvious pattern, and I’ll need to try to slow down and carefully look at the board. I was also potentially overcommitted to the strategy I had already decided at this point, which was to aim for lower calculation effort (and risk of a blunder with material loss) and opt to trade down to an endgame up material. Although this strategy works, by committing to this too soon could potentially be seen as a little lazy.
Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/54862511529
