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I have recently been responding with the aggressive “Wayward Queen”, that is Qh5 when my opponent plays Bc5, the Anderssen Defense against the Vienna Game, and have been doing really well! According to Stockfish, the much more conventional-looking Nf3 is the best move, but Qh5 is definitely okay, and might even be one of the best moves for white. Interestingly, according to the Lichess database, Qh5 is very infrequently played in the Anderssen Defense, in less than 0.5% of 400,000 games. This makes the move unexpected!

I didn’t play the most accurately in this game, but it nonetheless worked very well for me. What I’ve experienced so far, is that the Wayward queen in the Anderssen Defense of the Vienna Game can induce the opponent to make some errors in the placement of their own queen, and often induce kingside pawn movements which ultimately weakens the king’s defense. Furthermore, it potentially sets up white’s pieces for a nice attack kingside, which works really if they castle short.

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

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/43297788193

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2022.04.09"]
[Round "?"]
[White "vitualis"]
[Black "vitorjcpg"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C25"]
[WhiteElo "1350"]
[BlackElo "1162"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[EndTime "19:58:27 PDT"]
[Termination "vitualis won by resignation"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Bc5 3. Qh5 Qe7 4. Bc4 Nf6 5. Qf3 O-O 6. Nd5 Nxd5 7. Bxd5 c6 8. Bb3 d6 9. Ne2 Nd7 10. Ng3 Nf6 11. Nf5 Bxf5 12. Qxf5 a5 13. a4 g6 14. Qg5 Rae8 15. d3 Qd7 16. Qxf6 Qg4 17. Bh6 1-0