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Yesterday, I played a game that started with the four king’s and queen’s pawns in the centre as a pawn cube! This is also known as the Beyer Gambit. As I played d5, completing the pawn cube, I knew that the position was probably unsound for me, but it was aesthetically pleasing, looked fun, and would probably take my opponent out of their expectation. My opponent had opened with the Center Game, e4 and then d4 on the second move.

The Center Game is an aggressive opening and so, I opted to respond in this game with a hyperaggressive tactical style as well. My logic here was that my opponent might be expecting more defensive play, and so, going all in with attacks of my own might cause my opponent to become unbalanced, resulting in inaccuracies and potential blunders. Effectively, my overall strategy in this game was to out-aggro their aggro.

And it worked! The Beyer Gambit is objectively bad – according to Stockfish evaluation, the position outright favours white after d5 at +2.50. However, as you can see in the video as the game progresses, even though white has an objective advantage in the opening, seemingly innocuous moves in the early middle game resulted in the loss of a pawn, and a shift in the advantage to me. Later in the middle game, an objectively bad but very aggressive infiltration by my queen into their territory, while I was on the cusp of being checkmated also worked. My opponent’s slightly inaccurate play allowed me to capture a couple more pawns and then forced a queen trade. This resulted in us entering into an endgame where I had a dominating material advantage.

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

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/43134604941

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2022.04.07"]
[Round "?"]
[White "RahulKumar413"]
[Black "vitualis"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "C21"]
[WhiteElo "1289"]
[BlackElo "1345"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[EndTime "22:51:56 PDT"]
[Termination "vitualis won by resignation"]

1. e4 e5 2. d4 d5 3. dxe5 c6 4. Nc3 Bb4 5. Bd2 Qa5 6. Nf3 dxe4 7. Nxe4 Bxd2+ 8. Nexd2 Bg4 9. Be2 Bxf3 10. gxf3 Qxe5 11. Ne4 Nf6 12. c3 Nxe4 13. fxe4 Qxe4 14. Rg1 O-O 15. Qd2 Qe6 16. O-O-O Qxa2 17. Qg5 Qa1+ 18. Kd2 Qxb2+ 19. Kd3 g6 20. Ra1 Qb5+ 21. Kd2 Qxg5+ 22. Rxg5 f6 23. Rg3 Nd7 24. Rd3 Nc5 25. Kc2 Nxd3 26. Bxd3 0-1