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1. e4 c6 2. Qf3 e6
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That move, Queen f3, so early in the game always surprises me. I have seen strong players doing it for fun too, but one time even I happened to beat a Very Strong player who did that in a 5 min game, leading me to believe that objectively, this is not the best development. |
 
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3. Nh3
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There are always exceptions to chess rules, and some structures where the knight on the rim is doing something, I am not convinced this is a good example of a knight doing something. It accelerates the castling process, but it feels mainly like a forced move, because the queen took away the natural knight square on an earlier move. |
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3... d6 4. Bc4 d5
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I cannot be sure if it's the right transposition, but it rather reminded me of the Hillbilly attack against the Caro, so I thought it could work here as well. |
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5. exd5 exd5 6. Bb3 Nf6 7. d3 Be7
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It's kind of odd, as I am now as close to castling and completing my development as my opponent, it feels like their development could have gone faster. Considering the position of the knight and the queen, castling feels like the one justification for the development, but I could be wrong, this specific position is new to me. |
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8. Nf4 O-O 9. h3 Re8
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I mean, who doesn't like a discovered attack. Of course my opponent would see that, but I wasn't counting on it, this still allows my rook to develop naturally, without loss of tempo, and I am used to my dark squared bishop basking in the sun on its f8 square, passive or not, but I am used to a position like that. |
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10. O-O Nbd7 11. d4
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My opponent wisely restricts my d7 knight from moving to e5, but they are forced to relinquish the e4 square instead. Which temporarily gives me an outpost. I figure my knight there would be challenged, but my other knight is a team player and will jumpe to its defense. |
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11... Ne4 12. Qe2 Bd6
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I expected my bishop to be passive a while longer, this queen move allows me to move it to a slightly more active square, exposing a potential threat against the queen. Of course the threat would be seen, but the bishop already got to improve itself anyway, and again, crucially, without a loss of tempo. |
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13. Qg4
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Bold move. I think the only time I would move my queen under a double threat is when my own threat is greater, but to paraphrase Karpov, I can be too cautious at times. |
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13... Ndf6
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I of course expected the queen to move back to safety, the threat was just there, it wasn't the main goal, the main goal was developing my second knight to support my knight on e4, where it is positioned pretty nicely in my opinion. |
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14. Qh4
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Any Botez fans around here? From here on I could see the Botez gambit for what it was. |
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14... g5
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I got lucky, and only counted on |
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15. Qh6
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From puzzles we learn that when here is an obvious move(capturing the knight) there can be a less obvious one(capturing the queen). In this case I did not have to look, because I saw it one move earlier, but in other cases, alwasy a good policy to look for a better move. |
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15... Bf8 16. Qxf6 Qxf6
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I kind of hesitated here, if I should capture with the knight or the queen. The advantage of the knight was in restricting the opponent knight moves. The advantage of the queen is that it it gest more active. Of course that could seem hypocritical, my queen is theoretically just as volnurable on this square as my opponent's queen was on its square in the beginning, but I seem to have more pieces on this flank now, and my opponent's other pieces are less developed. So similar situation, yet, seemingly, different circumstances in essence. |
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17. Nd3 g4
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I had no doubt about moving that pawn forward. It doesn't create any obvious threats, it cannot really promote nor mate, but either it breaks the king's protective shelter, or it allows my light squared bishop to develop. |
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18. Nf4 g3
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In truth, even before my pawn move, I saw this clearly. That should my opponent move his f3 pawn, I will switch my target to his d4 pawn, with a mating threat against the king. I understood that he should have the time to protect the d4 pawn, to overprotect it, to take other measures, but I still had to try it an bait him with my pawn moves forward. I felt that he could be tempted into trying to chase my knight away from its glorious uncontested outpost. |
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19. f3
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Many games don't go my way, but in this one the ending strangely materialized as I have envisioned it, although this last sequence could have been avoided by my opponent, it is not a forced variation by any means, just a possible one. |
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19... Qxd4+ 20. Kh1
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Right before I captured this d4 pawn, I saw this beauty. A very unusual, at least for me, variation of the smothered mate, you usually see it with 2 pawns intact in front of the king, but my super hero pawn on g3 here created a similar situation. |
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20... Nf2+ 21. Kg1
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To practice my tactical vision, I mentally calculated this position before I captured the d4 pawn. I could not see the right continuation for a while, there were other discovered checks possible, but they were all too slow, took me 10 minutes to find the smothered mate visually, as I am no tactical genius. |
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21... Nxh3+ 22. Kh1 Qg1+ 23. Rxg1 Nf2#
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I did get lucky in this game for sure, my opponent did see many of my threats, but I feel, that my luck notwithstanding, this is a neat conclusion all the same. |
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