My BEST Queen Sacrifices!!

ladies and gentlemen have you ever lost your queen oh you just did like five minutes ago before clicking on this video i see that does happen maybe you lost your queen a day ago a week ago a month ago a year ago at some point in that period of time it's really bad it's really unfortunate when you lose your queen but what about when you sacrifice it now i know what you're saying you say every time i lose my queen i say i sacrifice it but sometimes in chess it's aesthetic it's a little bit of genius a little bit of brilliance a little bit of a mix of art science and beauty and everything in between when you give away your most powerful piece for a devastating combination that either leads to a gain of material uh or checkmate and in this video i'm going to share with you the greatest queen sacrifices of my chess career i actually had the chest.com like insights team uh take a look uh through my game history they they helped me put this together um and uh yeah with this this game in particular is the one that inspired it uh and then there's gonna be six games so i hope you enjoy i have nothing to say uh besides that here we go so i was playing a blizz game recently against an international master uh alex uh uh suluf and he played the carl khan against me and i played the advanced variation which i firmly believe is basically the only way to play for an advantage against the karo khan uh and he played c5 because he's obviously a proud owner of the gotham caro repertoire with black i took on c5 i'm joking by the way but maybe he is but probably not uh i took on c5 and he played e6 now here there are uh several options uh for this but uh a3 is considered the best move uh and then bishop c5 and white has a couple of approaches white can play b4 right away white can play knight f3 bishop d3 white can also play queen g4 queen g4 is a move uh and the point is that you're targeting this to trap the rook and actually black plays knight e7 and in this position white actually doesn't take you might ask why did you play queen g4 if you're not going to take well you want to play knight f3 later and bishop d3 but you like the fact that your queen is more active than it would be on the d1 square you don't take because you could it's not a bad move but in fact in fact you can win two pawns but while your queen is doing this black catches up uh in development not catches up like catches up in terms of being down two pawns by completely getting all of their pieces out and you have no development and uh it's actually kind of hard to play so i played after knight e7 the move b4 uh and then bishop b2 i'm sort of improvising here uh i don't i don't know a whole lot about this variation it's blitz so i'm sort of doing what i want and now playing the move h4 uh to the untrained eye i mean it just looks like i'm gonna go h5h6 and deliver mate like you give black a couple of moves uh and then you know it's simply checkmate it's really not that simple black's position is actually incredibly resilient which is why excuse me which is why i play the carl khan with black myself uh so i played h4 he played queen c7 and i mean just visually speaking it it does look like i have a very nice position i have both bishops pointing in the right direction uh i'm going to play h5 maybe then knight g5 and getting to h7 uh but here he plays a fantastic move a move that i totally just really i overlooked it because it doesn't look possible uh the move d4 just looks silly for black to play that because i'm gonna be taking it but uh it cuts the coordination of my position and now he's gonna take on e5 and once he takes on e5 uh i'm either gonna have to trade a lot of material and there i won't be attacking him anymore or i cannot trade material and continue to try to attack him but be worse so it's a tough decision for me uh and you know i can take on g6 but i was like i didn't want to do this because i actually thought he could even take like this and then open up his rook so it's actually i'm the one being attacked so i continued on with h5 sacrificing a pawn uh kind of knight takes e5 knight takes d4 uh and uh i guess it's not really kind of sacrificing a pawn uh knight knight takes d3 queen takes d3 i i did get my pawn back but i i sacrificed uh time it's really what i sacrificed because even though i went here and the idea is very clearly to go h6 and mate the problem is that check is coming and then he's gonna take my queen so i tried to keep my queen on the board so that i could sacrifice it for something crazy later on in the video sorry later on in the game and then make a youtube video about it uh this video actually did straight up inspire this video um did you say this video inspired this video or this game inspired this i don't know my coffee i've taken like two sips of coffee i'm sorry it's very early in the morning um so he plays the move knight e5 and i go back to g3 now i am worse here actually before the move 95 i was quite a bit worse i'm quite a bit worse because even though it's actually totally equal material you wouldn't think that white is worse uh i don't have an attack and he's very close to on like kind of finishing his development like rook d8 for example his queen covers where i want to go and if i just try to play lazy moves like knight d2 and castling knight f6 is coming and all of a sudden i'm getting i'm getting shish kabob out here uh you know e5 i got the meat in the middle the peppers on the sides delicious meal by the way uh and uh he doesn't do that he he puts his knight on e5 and allows me to go back to g3 and then he plays knight c4 and knight c4 is actually a very good move because i i'm forced to trade queens with him right and my bishop is now hanging he has very good activity his next move is going to be to kick my night out bishop out and then i realize he just hung mate what what mate that's not mate knight is in the way yes but that's the right move oh queen takes g7 or should i say queen takes g7 he has to take and then knight f5 double check he cannot go here here here or here he would have to go here and that's mate imagine losing like that and that is why i wanted to make this youtube video now he actually was not a good sport about it he just resigned after queen takes g7 of course he is more uh he's more than welcome to resign but if somebody sacrificed their queen against me for force mate i would just let them play it just out of respect like you got me fair play to you queen takes g7 double check with the knight and that's how you know it's going to be a good video the next game that i have for you i've actually actually beat a lot of gm's in this video three of these wins are against gems uh this is a game against uh mikhail uh i think that's i i think russian speaking audience would know how to pronounce the last name i'm not always good excuse oh my goodness what is going on with me today i'm nose hiccups just very excited to make this video um i don't always know where to put the kind of like the emphasis in the last name i played a sideline so if you notice i brought my queen out early against the sicilian and then played queen e3 but this is a variation and as you can see uh the goal is to castle on opposite sides so we have opposite side castling uh this will lead to a very very dynamic position uh white is maybe better but it's it's very complicated and i play the move knight g for uh knight g4 i play the move g4 here and the point of g4 is just i'm building up right i don't exactly know maybe i'll go f5 maybe g5 maybe h4 h5 of course i don't want to lose my pawn but uh and then you know he's probably gonna go for b5 like he's he's gonna attack me there uh rook b8 knight before etc knight back to d7 to activate the bishop but here he surprises me by sacrificing a piece which you have to be like a hundred percent certain you know what you're doing here because when you sacrifice not only are you sacrificing you're opening my rook but it's not just a sacrifice so i play bishop e2 and he goes back and now i'm like okay i gotta play energetically right because if i if i play lazy moves he'll go knight before you know i play a lazy move he plays rook fc8 and all of a sudden you know his position is actually starting to make some sense uh not to mention you know bishop c3 queen a2 like the stuff is there so i have to play energetically so what do i do i play a five i play a pawn break which will either kick out his bishop uh or open up his g file so the position is going to open up even more right um he plays knight b4 i play king b1 making sure my a2 pawn is protected and now i'm threatening everything so i'm threatening his bishop i'm threatening this it's looking real bad uh and then he allows me the opportunity here to do something beautiful again if he takes on f5 i'm taking on h7 uh it's yeah it's just it's just bad news if he takes a moment here to play a move like h6 um what's funny is that i i actually should not take this because rook takes c3 is very scary and i can actually lose this game sometimes in these videos we take for granted you know how how i'm explaining the position like it's close to be to losing here for white white does have to be careful uh and he plays rook takes c3 and here you can try to find queen sacrifice number two of the video because it's not the most clear thing in the world and then i actually had first seen this prior again he is trying to mate me bishop c3 the only reason that this this does not work is because of my queen sacrifice now if you said queen c3 uh you got to be drug tested because he he just does the same like it's not that's not that this is the fastest way to lose the game maybe the right answer is queen h7 but now what i mean what do i do you say oh easy you take here and then you take here and that's the second best move the best move is not to do that but to go here because here's the difference i get a bishop now i get a rook but the difference is my rook is here so i can take this rook but first before i take that rook what do i have to do there's still this and this i take the knight with a tempo so i get rid of his attacking piece and i attack his queen forcing him to take and when it all settles i am up two rooks in a night for a queen is that a completely winning position at my level yes uh at the audience level maybe not necessarily i would still argue that the queen is a menace here for like intermediate players because white has to coordinate their pieces super well so what a combination queen h3 anticipating this sacking the queen forcing the king out into this diagonal check only moves to block then i take the knight an extra move then i take the rook and uh i i went on in this game to consolidate making sure i don't get mated that's a check but he did very well i mean he has a very annoying position um and you know i'm trying to uh trying to check him a little bit here like you see i have to play very passively because he's just attacking me full force but i create a little cocoon and it's it's a blitz game so obviously the quality starts to dip as you get later and later into the game uh i don't exactly even know how i ended up winning the game oh i guess i i guess i just i guess i just flagged him i guess i just flagged him okay i guess it was a 3-0 game interesting i just played rook g8 and he lost on time wow fastest so it wasn't even a it wasn't even a clean conversion um [Music] the best way to win here would have been check here force his king out oh wow and just go here and his king is kind of stuck so i'm gonna threaten knight takes d4 when you are playing against the queen and you have a lot of pieces you want to remove the queen's help so just so where you understand why this is so good uh you wanna you wanna make sure that you're just getting rid of all the assistance that the queen can have you know um because when you do that the rooks and the bishop all together will just dominate the queen but when the queen has more pawns more bit you know bishop and knight it's going to make it a lot more difficult so the conversion wasn't the cleanest sadly because it's online blitz the games get a little bit stupid when they get low on time but uh yeah what a sacrifice that took apart and sacrificed the queen took a bishop for rook then the knight and then the rook took the whole house with me to get the queen next game uh i'm playing uh uh this is mikhail masjarov uh mosher of majorarov also russian gm um uh and uh i think this was just a random game uh here i played um i played a really dumb gambit with white so i played d4 knight f6 g4 he didn't take which allowed me to go g5 and as you can see i mean the position is just absurdly stupid to the point that i'm actually getting mated maybe uh here i can actually um oh no i can't i was gonna say i thought i could win a pawn with queen a4 check i can't because he has queen c6 and also here actually oops uh but i after c3 queen c5 i played bishop e3 and he played the move d4 now bishop b3 is a funny move i mean it's just a very goofy looking position uh he plays d4 uh i take and he goes here trying to beat up my queen side right so he takes on he takes on b2 uh and i'm gonna lose my rook and in this position i decide that i'm okay with losing my rook so first of all i sack my rook i sack my rook so i can force this queen into the corner of the board and while his queen is stuck on the corner of the board i can catch up in development i can take some pieces um and it's going to be good um so bishop b7 queen b3 and uh his queen has no escape right so now i would like to play king g2 knight c3 uh and um trap is queen knight c6 d5 knight d4 he comes uh into my position i trade him off like this and i play king g2 my plan is very simple i would like to attack his queen here's the problem i can't move my knight though because he's gonna play queen c3 right so i don't have that anymore so what does he do but just plays castles he's like all right do your worst knight bd2 there's just queen c3 uh and uh yeah i mean i'm i'm i'm in a bit of trouble now because in my mind i was like okay even if this queen gets out i'm gonna have an attack uh and uh by the way as i'm uh [Music] i'm messaging my thumbnail designer for the thumbnail of this video as i'm recording this video this is like crazy this is inception this is a little behind the scenes it's gonna be me holding a queen up but you already know that because you clicked on the video it's crazy big mind warp um so i here i basically just assumed that you know uh i can't play like this right knight b2 queen c3 so i decided to play h5 and g6 right he plays f5 and um things get crazy here okay so i'm winning but it's it's it's not so clear i mean it's much easier when you analyze the game with stock fish in the eval bar so i played d6 check right he plays king h8 i take here okay now he takes here sacrificing his rook so it takes takes and we have a position where my knight is hanging and then he's threatening to actually win some material again knight bd2 at any moment not a good move because takes and the queen escapes so uh i'm winning but it's a little bit it's a little bit tricky position right i mean if i let's say i just play lazy move knight g5 to try to play knight f7 maybe i'll win you know maybe i'll win maybe i'll be able to get out uh and i'll uh and i'll be winning here but then i wouldn't make it into a queen sacrifice video so you know what i played here because they're so nasty queen f7 if he takes i just take nothing changes the bishop is hanging in the rook is hanging queen have seven threatens mate the threat is to take the rook if he takes my queen i go here and he can't stop me from queening it's insane it doesn't matter he could take his queen and his bishop cannot prov and his king nobody can prevent my pawns that's crazy queen f7 i was very impressed with myself i have to say he played rook d8 so he didn't he didn't let me uh do anything and here i played h6 and uh the game is simply over because he can't there's nothing he can do here i mean i'm just gonna take uh or i'm gonna take he went here so now his queen actually is useful but uh i take and i play rook h7 uh and the game is simply over it's just mate he takes with the queen and i take with the queen as well uh and yeah i mean this all came from the opening you know he uh he went to b2 and i sacrificed then i kept his queen caged most of the game and that allowed me to create this big attack while his queen was totally stranded on the side of the board and then while his queen was stuck on the board but existing my queen was free and roaming but sacrificed itself for the greater good of the position beautiful it's art next game i have for you uh i was playing with the white pieces against the international master from romania uh i think yes yes uh my opponent played an aliokin's defense uh this is i think a title tuesday game and i went for this a4 back in the day i was playing this goofy line where you play rook a3 and rook to g3 but now nobody plays the joker's defense i don't know why everybody started playing like you know more professional variations uh this is a very very funny line and and this is the idea i mean it's it again it's not something that i would ever play over the board but it's definitely something that i would play in blitz um this is this is this is a real line uh so g6 of course you see g6 you have to play h4 uh and as you can see i i frequently am going for these extremely dumb looking positions because i just i like to have some fun you know i think chess should be fun right so here we have a position uh my queen side is sort of solid i'm preventing the knights from getting forward of course black is better because i played rook a3 and rook g3 so black probably should be better according to the principles of chess he plays e5 now what do i know about chess uh not much but enough to tell you that uh if i want to start an attack i have to lock the center so i don't want the center open i don't want the queen seeing each other none of that stuff i forced him out of the middle and now we begin the fun i sacked my rook for the bishop that was his most active piece and i correctly was able to evaluate that once i move my knight to g5 and then take i'm gonna be able to play h5 very quickly like this pawn is not being stopped and if that pawn is not being stopped the rook is getting open and if the rook is getting open the king is going to be weak and if the king is going to be weak my pieces are going to smell blood right and then they're going to go for the king so what does my opponent do my opponent also cannot kick my knight out because that invites it straight into the tea party knight f5 i take g4 and now my opponent has lost a second active piece so they are stuck with these three pieces which are anything but active because my pawn structure is so restricting and i'm not going to take this rook so if my opponent plays queen e7 i'm not gonna take this rook i mean maybe i will but i would much rather start an attack well the only reason i would take this rook is because i could replace it with another diagonal attacker that's actually the truth um so rook c7 he doesn't even let me take and uh plays f5 and of course now i get my knight 26. now i am winning of course i'm winning here uh and uh but it it wouldn't be a gotham game uh if we didn't have a flare for the dramatic so i i sacked my bishop i was forked i decided to go for this sequence of moves where i'm sacrificing my bishop uh and uh you know he takes my bishop here queen e7 and now again i could take but i decide not to i i want my knight on the board i think my knight is better than any of those bozos i think my knight is super strong uh and uh you know my attack is is moving forward he offers a queen trade of course i'm not trading queens i'm gonna go back uh he now brings the knight back finally and his idea with this night move is the trade by knight c5 or knight f8 i will then probably try to go back here at this point i realized that i i need some more help my queen and knight are good but i need a little bit of help so i play the move h5 that queen is stuck guarding uh the mate so he can't take because the queen cannot got both he plays king h8 which is a very good move i play h6 and he goes here and suddenly i'm like wait a minute i have no more moves that's that's a problem you see if i play h5 h7 i don't have a threat and he's gonna go here and now my knight's getting traded when my knight gets traded i lose support of everything in the position and then what's gonna happen next is gonna trade queens with me once he trades queens with me i'm i'm done for i have no more attack i'm only playing for a draw so he slowed me down so what do i do what can i possibly do i mean he's completely stopped my attack right survey says no queen sacrifice number four queen g7 using the h-pawn as an anchor and black loses because it's mate you have to take the queen it's made right if queen g7 then i take and then my rook goes down and then i queen and then i queen so he can't take with the queen but if he takes with the bishop it's even worse because it's double check so this is just straight up a checkmate the king is completely incubated my knight on e6 survives and is the absolute glue of my position queen g7 check kaboom and uh yeah game is over amazing i mean super exciting awesome move very very very exciting move i love playing moves like this and um yeah i mean just what can i say this is just just awesome stuff uh i i mean i'm not patting myself on the back it's more it's more just like the move is so satisfying to play sometimes impossible moves look possible i mean impossible moves are possible they don't look possible they look impossible that makes sense doesn't matter example number five uh this was against the polish grandmaster so again i actually beat some decent players in this video uh this one was a weird game so i i played knight c3 for into a french he played some weird stuff and then it became like uh i don't even know what this is it's like i don't know a french defense but not really i'm sort of playing a vienna setup but also not really i'm playing like a grand prix attack that's kind of what it is so we kind of got this position even though it was you know e6 a6 some weird stuff it's kind of like we got the position from a sicilian defense you know knight c3 a6 f4 knight c6 knight f3 e6 uh d3 d5 something like this it's literally the exact same position right so i go here fiance my bishop and castle and he plays bishop g7 and here i decide that i'm going to go attack him so i play g4 g4 has two purposes number one uh attack number two this idea so the queen is going to sneak behind on the dark squares for when he castle short and go attack now what does he do strikes me on the other side of the board we just have a vintage position of two dudes trying to scrap that's what we're trying to do this is uh you know sicilian typical close sicilian attacking stuff um so i what do you know about the center if you want a certain attack lock it like they lock the octagon door right in the in in the ufc e5 very important move let's lock the center black's bishop and knight sort of disconnected now doesn't really matter about this knight e2 i'm not really worried about the queen side attack because there's a king here there's nothing here all right you're shooting flaming arrows into into nothing it's sand all right there's sand over there and over here that's the crown all right so i'm not really worried opponent tries to you know break out of the center that center lock is staying that center lock has to stay opponent goes after the center lock i defend the center lock so the the center being closed is a very important part of this attack before i'm actually able to do anything else you know until i'm able to go h4 h5 etc right so he finishes development here comes the h-pawn right there's there's a monarch on the other side i gotta go get him all right he plays h6 and now i play rookie one because again in the future i wanna over protect the center what he should do now is either play c4 or d4 to bring his knight d4 you know d4 knight d5 looks very natural um but anything he moves i'm gonna be able to respond right so he plays rook f7 and um i i make a move on that side of the board to kind of prepare that attack and also make my center more fortified so he takes takes takes and now the center is totally locked but the mistake that i made is there's now a lot of empty room here so he's gonna start using that empty room he plays knight a5 knight c4 is coming maybe the queen is even gonna get in over here maybe the bishop is gonna i mean the bishop one b5 is gonna be so annoying right so it's still equal i mean i'm not like worse but it's i'm giving him a little bit more than i should so i have to make a couple of retreating moves uh as this chess and the attack continues here comes h5 the id of h5 is knight h4 knight g6 he plays here and i decide i've had enough i'm sacrificing the knight i want my g h pawns to go forward together uh and and i want to launch an attack on the king and that's exactly what i do i sacrifice and i'm down a piece but it's for two pawns and it's anything but close here i mean sorry it's anything but uh what was i gonna say it's like it's anything but over really even though i've sacrificed the piece uh he can move but then i'm gonna move my bishop and then i'll play g5 h6 etc he goes bishop back to f8 i play h6 all right queen takes a2 and um king f7 his idea here was that he was gonna run the king and he was not really worried about something like this and that's fine that's absolutely fine um what he should have probably done is played bishop e8 bishop g6 he should have defended his king like that and that's not easy to do considering it looks like i'm about to just blow his uh blow him out of the water here um so queen d3 king f7 h7 bishop g7 and seems like i've been stopped but as you already know in this video that is not what happened bishop takes knight now he should not take back what he should do here is try to trade my queen my queen is the problem right but it's blitz he takes i go here he goes here and uh i think this is maybe my best queen sacrifice ever um it's one of the coolest moves i've ever played it's like it's similar to the major one the one that was earlier in the video but it's way more savage in my opinion in this position i played the move queen f6 check that is so gross if he goes king e8 i just take and i oh i just taken i queen but if he takes this is so brutal the pawns create a barrier and nobody can stop h.a none of his pieces and his queen has the whole board it's not trapped anywhere and my king is safe from checks too you know if he had a check this would have been this would have been a check and he would have won my pawn so everything had to work to escort the pawn to the h8 square it's one of the most amazing moves i've ever played queen f6 oh it's the only move i should have gotten two brilliant moves for the price of one and uh the game is over he just resigns because can't do anything not only am i making a queen it's much worse his king can't escape his king just can't run it's mate there's nothing he can do so it's just unreal like he not only does he he loses he loses the promotion he loses the game he could play maybe e5 no he can't it's still mate oh my god i don't even wow so yeah queen f6 amazing and the final game i have for you is actually a game with black i think i most of the games i'm winning with white but this game with black was a you know i played a dutch it was a leningrad dutch which is used to be one of my favorite openings i in this game i played a very very closed position you know e5 as you can see both sides have all their pawns i think in this game it took 23 moves to trade a piece so again i'm going for a king side attack you see this the same idea as the last game g5 all this i like these structures i really like to build up these structures in this way um and uh you know we have the closed center you know uh bishop back to ca g4 queen e8 look at this i mean it's this is like typical like dutch attack you know locked center look at that knight on f3 i mean that is a brutal knight to deal with but he is he's dealing with it well i mean he's just moving his knights right around it he's actually better here only looks like black is a big attack right so knight h5 i try to trade his knight he plays knight to e6 and here i play bishop e5 and my idea was that this blockade is too strong i just had that knight do you remember on e6 so i'm trying to get him to take my rook uh and he does so i'm happy here because the night is gone my rook is gone but i'm several moves away from just mating right i'm worse but doesn't feel that way okay he plays knight to e6 i play queen h6 and he takes and plays queen c3 so it's basically who's gonna get to who first i need a few moves right i need a few moves and then it's mate the problem is he's right there and he will always be defending that square so at some point i'm gonna have to get rid of his knight and that point is right now i am fed up i'm gonna take he goes here and in this position i uncork disgusting stuff disgusting stuff so again it's it comes down to a matter of moves knight f6 back he will play h4 and if i try to play this this this he will take okay and if i try to play this he will go here and if i try to play this i'ma move away from mate but i lose why do i lose here here here king g7 queen e7 doesn't really matter where i go check here mate and i get forced mated on the verge of mating him so i don't want that to happen so what do i do well i go forward and that is what he missed he missed the fact that after queen to e5 queen h3 is right there i the difference being that last time okay uh last time he could at least play the move uh he could at least play the move h4 but he can't play that right now because knight e2 check so i have two threats so after knight f4 what does he do he plays king h1 with the idea of queen h3 rook g1 and that's exactly what happens but he hasn't actually stopped my threat because the threat is still queen g2 and i take force the king and fork the king and the queen done and here we go and i pick up the pawn i'm now up a night in a rook end game we clean it up and we get the win you'll notice that most of these most of these queen sacrifices come from belligerent king attacks actually the pawn structure of this last game if you recognize it it's the same exact pawn structure that we saw in the game just now but mirrored image fg and epons right i just had this game against the sg chess f g and e look and the pawn is here it's the same exact structure but colors reverse so as you can see i have a playing style so i hope you enjoyed that video let me know if you want me to dig through some more of my insights specifically if you have any ideas do let me know uh and uh yeah i'm happy to make content based on that so i'll see you the next video get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 302,253

Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess london, gothamchess caro kann, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna

Id: DNw-HzkFBHk

Length: 32min 11sec (1931 seconds)

Published: Fri May 20 2022