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In yesterday’s video, “the Venomous Vienna”, we looked at a game where I successfully checkmated an opponent in 8 moves. That game started with the Max Lange variation of the Vienna game, with the opponent making an early queen move to f6, and then responded to knight to d5 with a critical blunder. Today, we are going to look at another game with the same system, where the opponent doesn’t make as calamitous a blunder, but nonetheless is critically damaged from their early moves. One of the learnings that I got when analysing these games is that for black, the early move queen f6 to set up a natural looking and seemingly powerful attack against white’s weak f-pawn doesn’t actually work. The advantage is almost entirely for white. It’s one of the aspects that makes the Vienna so venomous, so potentially tricky for black if they want to respond aggressively.

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/30521327885

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2021.11.12"]
[Round "?"]
[White "vitualis"]
[Black "TomBennett17"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C23"]
[WhiteElo "1212"]
[BlackElo "1249"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[EndTime "21:59:07 PST"]
[Termination "vitualis won by resignation"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. Qg4 Qf6 5. Nd5 Qg6 6. Qxg6 hxg6 7. Nxc7+ Kf8 8. Nxa8 Bd6 9. c3 Nf6 10. Bd5 Ne7 11. d3 Nexd5 12. exd5 Nxd5 13. Nf3 f6 14. O-O Kf7 15. Bd2 b6 16. c4 Nb4 17. Bxb4 Bxb4 18. Nc7 Bb7 19. Nd5 Bxd5 20. cxd5 d6 21. a3 Bc5 22. b4 Bd4 23. Nxd4 exd4 24. Rfe1 Rh5 25. Rac1 Rxd5 26. Rc7+ Kg8 27. Re8+ Kh7 28. Rcc8 g5 29. Re7 a5 30. bxa5 bxa5 31. a4 Kg6 32. Rcc7 Kf5 33. Rxg7 Re5 34. Rge7 Rd5 35. Rb7 Rc5 36. Rb5 Kg6 37. Rxc5 dxc5 38. Rc7 1-0