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Today, I played another game where the path to victory was paved by piece sacrifice!In the last video, I spoke about a game where a strategy of aggressive and bombastic play resulted in a beautiful win. In this second video of the series, I again choose a line to sacrifice pieces, considered objectively bad by Stockfish, but which again, led to a good result. In the beginner-intermediate space, it’s perhaps useful to consider that the difference between a blunder and a gambit might simply be one of choice and perspective!

One of the ideas out of the Vienna game when the f-pawn is captured, and the opponent has castled king-side, is to take advantage of the semi-open f-file. That is, targeting the opponent’s weak f-pawn and launching an all out assault on the king. If you follow Stockfish’s evaluation, the barrage of attacks against the opponent’s king was objectively bad, but the assertiveness and audacity of the attack resulted in inaccurate play by the opponent, eventually giving me a winning advantage in the endgame.

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

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/42510606431

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2022.03.31"]
[Round "?"]
[White "vitualis"]
[Black "konstantinoskritikos"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C25"]
[WhiteElo "1351"]
[BlackElo "1370"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[EndTime "17:34:01 PDT"]
[Termination "vitualis won by checkmate"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 d6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. d3 h6 5. f4 exf4 6. Bxf4 Nc6 7. Nf3 g6 8. O-O Bg7 9. d4 O-O 10. e5 dxe5 11. dxe5 Nh5 12. Bxf7+ Kxf7 13. Ng5+ hxg5 14. Bxg5+ Kg8 15. Bxd8 Rxd8 16. Nd5 Bxe5 17. Ne7+ Kg7 18. Qe2 Nf4 19. Qe4 Rd4 20. Qe3 Bf6 21. Nxc6 bxc6 22. Rxf4 Rxf4 23. Qxf4 Bxb2 24. Qxc7+ Kh6 25. Rf1 Bd4+ 26. Kh1 c5 27. Qf4+ g5 28. Qd6+ Kh5 29. Qg3 Bb7 30. Qh3+ Kg6 31. c3 Bf6 32. Qf5+ Kg7 33. Qxf6+ Kg8 34. Qxg5+ Kh8 35. Rf7 Rg8 36. Qh6# 1-0