Tactic: Beware of having your queen and king on the same diagonal


There are always risks with early queen moves as the queen will get attacked, and potentially trapped, by less valuable pieces. One particularly thing to look out for, both as the player with the queen out, and as the player trying to threaten the opponent’s queen, are absolute pins. In the earlier part of the game, this will more likely than not be in the situation where the queen and the king are on the same diagonal, with the attacking piece being a bishop. The side that loses a queen for a bishop will probably lose the game. Let’s see an example of the tactic in the following game.

The opponent in this game played the Center Game, which I’ve faced only a few times. This is effectively a gambit, and as we could see in the Stockfish evaluation, it’s entirely okay to accept the gambit, and following up with natural looking developing moves is fine for black. Although I did incrementally gain some advantage in the opening, the loss of the queen by my opponent was terminal. I thought they played really well from that point onwards, but they simply couldn’t recover from the material disadvantage. I hope you found this video interesting, and thanks for watching!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/39214249495

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2022.02.21"]
[Round "?"]
[White "gmaha1981"]
[Black "vitualis"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "C22"]
[WhiteElo "1333"]
[BlackElo "1327"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[EndTime "13:07:53 PST"]
[Termination "vitualis won by checkmate"]

1. e4 e5 2. d4 exd4 3. Qxd4 Nc6 4. Qd1 Nf6 5. f3 d5 6. Bb5 a6 7. Ba4 b5 8. Bb3 Be6 9. Qe2 Nd4 10. Qe3 Bc5 11. Qc3 Qd6 12. Bg5 Bb4 13. Bxf6 Bxc3+ 14. bxc3 Nxc2+ 15. Bxc2 gxf6 16. exd5 Qxd5 17. Be4 Qg5 18. f4 Qxf4 19. Bxa8 Qe3+ 20. Ne2 Bc4 21. Bf3 O-O 22. Na3 Bxe2 23. Bxe2 Re8 24. Kd1 Qxe2+ 25. Kc1 Qxg2 26. Rd1 Qg5+ 27. Kb2 Re2+ 28. Nc2 Qf5 29. Rac1 a5 30. Kb1 Rxh2 31. Rg1+ Kf8 32. Rgd1 b4 33. cxb4 axb4 34. Rf1 Rf2 35. Rh1 c5 36. Rhd1 c4 37. Rd8+ Ke7 38. Rh8 b3 39. Re1+ Kd6 40. Rd1+ Kc5 41. Rhd8 Qxc2+ 42. Ka1 Qxa2# 0-1

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