Friday, September 8, 2017

My queen is invisible!

I have great news: My opponents don’t see my queen (at least sometimes). Maybe it’s only when my opponents are about to move their own queen, I’m not sure yet.



Yesterday I played a rated classical (standard) game on lichess with time control 10 0. This is the position after I played 17. g4. I wanted to open up Black’s kingside (where the king is uncastled) and bring a rook on the eventually-open g-file (or f-file, if lines open up). But my opponent played a move I didn’t think was possible, they played 17. … f4?!, so I responded with 18. exf4, simply winning the pawn. Perhaps Black’s plan could have been to divert my e-pawn to play 18. … d4 (as well as to keep files closed around their king), but no, instead they played 18. … Qxf4??, taking the pawn back:



And they simply resigned after 19. Qxf4+ 1-0.

Then the next day (today), I played a casual (unrated) bullet 2 1 game, and we reached this position:



Here we castled on opposite sides, and I just won a pawn. We’re both planning to attack each other’s king, although my opponent’s attack seems to be coming quite a bit faster--they’ve got both their rooks aligned with my kingside, and the three wing pawns have reached the 4th and 5th ranks. Here I was planning on playing an eventual Bc4, pinning the e6 knight and preventing the move d4, which would prevent my knight from jumping into c4. Eventually I’d also like to develop the queen and bring a rook to the c-file, and play a4, a5, and a6 or b6. But here I decided to hold back on Bc4 in case the bishop is needed for defense on the kingside, so I played 19. Qb3, also preventing d4 and making way for the rooks, with the intention of playing Bc4 next move and pin the knight. My opponent played 19. … g4 and I played 20. Bc4, attacking the knight. Or so I thought--my opponent continued with 20. … g3?, so I took the knight with 21. Bxe6:



And then evidently, my opponent recaptured with 21. … Qxe6?? and resigned after 22. Qxe6 1-0.

So I don’t know what’s going on with my queen…

Both games are available here:





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