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Today, I played an absolutely fantastic fun game of the Vienna Game. In this game, my opponent played the Max Lange Defense, which is to respond to the Vienna on move 2 symmetrically with Nc6. Being a bit cheeky, I attempted to scholar’s mate, which of course, doesn’t work at the intermediate level. Indeed, moving the queen out early is probably a mistake as the queen can become a target. Amazingly in this game, by the end of the opening and entering the middle game, my opponent and I had developed most of our pieces, but neither of us had captured. The centre of the board was almost completely packed, creating this incredible tension of threats, defenses, and counterattacks!

Once the centre exploded, we were each left with only half our pieces. One of the consequences of there being so many threats is that it is very easy to miscount and blunder. I blundered first, though perhaps the best line for my opponent to capitalise the advantage was rather obscure. My opponent blundered second, and this gave me a huge advantage in the middle game. It still wasn’t easy though as we then entered a rather complicated endgame. Once again, it was a matter of not who blunders first, or even the most, but who blunders last! Luckily, that wasn’t me and I managed to get a nice win by checkmate.

I hope you found this video interesting, and thanks for watching!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/39044935289

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2022.02.19"]
[Round "?"]
[White "vitualis"]
[Black "EngBolado"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C25"]
[WhiteElo "1327"]
[BlackElo "1391"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[EndTime "13:52:26 PST"]
[Termination "vitualis won by checkmate"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3. Bc4 h6 4. Qf3 Nf6 5. Nge2 d6 6. Nd5 Be7 7. Nec3 Nd4 8. Qd3 O-O 9. O-O Be6 10. f4 c6 11. Nxf6+ Bxf6 12. f5 d5 13. fxe6 dxc4 14. exf7+ Rxf7 15. Qxc4 Kh8 16. Qxf7 Qb6 17. Kh1 Qc5 18. Qxb7 Rf8 19. b4 Qc4 20. d3 Qxc3 21. Be3 Nxc2 22. Bxh6 gxh6 23. Rac1 Qxd3 24. Qxc6 Nxb4 25. Qe6 Kg7 26. Qg4+ Kh8 27. Qg6 Bg7 28. Rxf8+ Bxf8 29. Qf6+ Bg7 30. Rc8+ Kh7 31. Qf5# 1-0