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Yesterday, my opponent resigned on move 13 after getting getting their queen pinned by my rook! This was a relatively short game where I played the Grand Prix Attack, in response to my opponent’s Sicilian Defense. At the beginner-intermediate level, and both my opponent and I were in the mid-1300s in this rapid 30 min game, I find really good success with the Grand Prix. I suspect that many people who play the Sicilian might simply not expect it, and so risk making some unaccurate moves. Please enjoy!

So what went wrong for my opponent? Firstly, the early Qh4+ on move 4 wasn’t an effective attack, with the queen forced immediately to retreat after blocking and counterattacking with a pawn move, g3. My opponent lost tempo, and more than that, retreating the queen to e7 set up the downstream risk of having the queen pinned. Later, allowing the pawn trade and opening up the centre of the board before castling placed the king at risk of an attack. And lastly, when the queen was pinned, loss aversion meant that rather than accepting that the queen’s fate was unavoidable, the attempts to unpin first with one knight, and then the next, resulted in a catastrophic loss of material.

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

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/42858555477

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2022.04.04"]
[Round "?"]
[White "vitualis"]
[Black "Mrfourteen14"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B23"]
[WhiteElo "1331"]
[BlackElo "1385"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[EndTime "17:54:36 PDT"]
[Termination "vitualis won by resignation"]

1. e4 c5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3. f4 e6 4. Bc4 Qh4+ 5. g3 Qe7 6. Nf3 a6 7. a4 b6 8. O-O Bb7 9. f5 exf5 10. exf5 Nf6 11. Re1 Ne4 12. Rxe4 Ne5 13. Rxe5 1-0