Vienna Gambit Declined 3… d6 | SMOOTH Victory!
#vienna #viennagambit #brilliant
Sometimes after some complicated games, it's meditative to play and win a nice smooth game of the Vienna Game. I imagine that this is like a Viennese Coffee, strong black espresso with cream!
The game begins with the black coffee of chess, e4-e5, and we enter a Vienna Gambit Declined with d6 (1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. f4 d6). The usual opening tactic here is to try to take the full centre with Black's conservative move, so develop the other knight and aim for d4 if possible.
As Black decided to try a four knights approach to the position this made it possible... (5. d4), and after the central trades (5... exd4 6. Nxd4 Nxd4 7. Qxd4), I have very nice central control, okay development, with an okay advantage [+0.5].
We enter the middlegame on move 10 with both of us having castled kingside. The strategy for me is quite simple, attack Black's kingside position! I played (11. f5) to draw a fence of pawns, closing off the access of Black's pieces from the kingside. Stockfish thinks that this is inaccurate [0.00] as with perfect play, Black is just fast enough, but they need to play very accurately for that to be the case.
Black expands and attacks down the queenside, but it's the wrong side. With (12... b4) they attack my knight on c3, but I just one tempo too quick with (13. Bh6). I now have an immediate checkmate threat on g7! Black had to find a difficult to backwards knight move (Ne8) in this position, and they didn't. They played the otherwise seemingly forced (13. g6) which was a blunder [+4.3] demonstrating that my simple tactical approach worked. I'm even gifted with a brilliancy with (14. fxg6), ostensibly sacrificing my knight on c3. Admittedly, this was an easy move to see as if Black greedily captured the hanging knight, there would be [+M2].
Although they saw this, Black's king is now hunted, and their defenders are stumbling over themselves. I trade my bishop for Black's defensive rook. The queen captures back, but this results in their knight being pinned. On move 19, Black makes a terminal mistake. They didn't appreciate that the f-file was fully open and controlled by my rook. Black, down on material, greedily captures my b-pawn with their bishop, emboldened by the queen-bishop battery down that diagonal. They probably thought that this would win tempo as it chains an attack on my rook on a1. However, this blunders a back rank mate-in-2! I now had (20. Rf8+) and Black immediately resigned. Their only legal move is to sacrifice their queen, with mate the next turn. GG!
The big takeaway from this game is that the simple strategic approach of launching a big attack on Black's king in the middlegame typically works well in the Vienna Gambit!
Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/88560736813
