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Yestersday, I won a game after sacrificing multiple pieces and pawns, and was down 7 points of material! Sometimes, the strategy when you’re behind and at a disadvantage is to play cautiously and defensively, create some complications, hold onto your material and hope that the opponent will make some errors in the positional play. Sometimes, an alternative strategy is to play super aggressively to put the opponent psychologically off-guard. And doing this is super-fun! In this game, I screwed up against the Scotch Gambit, coming out poorly after the opening. However, I chose to see my early loss as a countergambit and it worked!

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Looking only at the evaluation, my opponent was seemingly completely winning – almost +10 near the end. However, my desparate-looking moves were not without a plan. The trap I had set was not overly difficult to see, except that I suspected that my opponent was probably so convinced that they had a winning position, they had a blind eye to their own back rank. As per the aphorism – it’s never too late to hang back rank mate!

I predicted, and hoped (!) they would play what was their final move – Nd6 – as it was a natural looking move that seemed to fork my bishop and rook. However, the trap was sprung! By not defending their king, my opponent allowed for a potential forced mate in 3. Stockfish evaluated my final move as “brilliant” – a rook sacrifice that seemingly came out of nowhere – and my opponent resigned.

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

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/42357585455

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2022.03.29"]
[Round "?"]
[White "mp324"]
[Black "vitualis"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "C45"]
[WhiteElo "1462"]
[BlackElo "1340"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[EndTime "22:49:45 PDT"]
[Termination "vitualis won by resignation"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 exd4 4. Bc4 Nf6 5. e5 Qe7 6. O-O Nxe5 7. Nxe5 Qxe5 8. Re1 Qxe1+ 9. Qxe1+ Be7 10. c3 d5 11. Bd3 dxc3 12. Nxc3 d4 13. Nb5 O-O 14. Qxe7 Re8 15. Qxc7 Re1+ 16. Bf1 Bf5 17. Qxb7 Rae8 18. Nd6 Rxf1+ 0-1