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Recently, I haven’t been doing so well in chess. I had gotten all the way to almost 1400 ELO in rapid, but am now back down to the mid-1200s. When I have the black pieces, my heart often sinks when the opponent plays an Italian. Recently, I’ve been trying to avoid the Giuoco Piano in particular by playing the two knights defense, and then hoping to be able to play the Ponziani-Steinitz Gambit. However, what occurs often times is that we end up in a four knights game, which is also not my favourite. My hunch, however, is that dedicated Italian players at the beginner-intermediate level are less familiar with four knights than Giuoco Piano. A look at my games on chess.com demonstrates that I usually lose as black in the Giuoco Piano, but usually win as black in the (much fewer games) of the four knights.

This game gave me a bit of confidence boost as I managed to get an accuracy of 97.1 with no inaccuracies, mistakes, or blunders. My opponent’s relatively aggressive style suited me as I like these sorts of games. We were very closely balanced out of the opening and into the middle game. However, my opponent’s focus on attack rather than defense resulted in them missing that my absolute pin of their knight against their king removed a defender of a critical pawn in the centre of the board. This allowed a devasting skewer of their queen and rook with my bishop – a move which ended the game.

Tactically, pins prevent the movement of opponent pieces. The power of any given pin depends on the context of the position. For example, if the piece’s role on the board doesn’t require movement, it is there to physically block something, it might not be much of an issue. Or, if the pinned piece is better defended than attacked, it may again be a tactical dead end. In this case, however, the pinned knight was not only a necessary defense (which requires it to move) of the materiality of the pawn, it was also to prevent the subsequent skewer. An insight from this game is that when one of your pieces gets newly pinned, it’s very important to evaluate the consequences of that pin.

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/47193595535

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2022.05.24"]
[Round "?"]
[White "granmense"]
[Black "vitualis"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "C42"]
[WhiteElo "1324"]
[BlackElo "1249"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[EndTime "22:03:25 PDT"]
[Termination "vitualis won by resignation"]

1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 Nf6 3. Nf3 Nc6 4. Nc3 Bc5 5. d3 h6 6. Be3 Bxe3 7. fxe3 d6 8. d4 Bg4 9. h3 Bh5 10. g4 Bg6 11. dxe5 Nxe5 12. Nxe5 dxe5 13. Qf3 c6 14. Rd1 Qa5 15. h4 Bxe4 0-1