Full Game:
I played the black pieces.
To start, white opted into a king’s gambit. It is a very dubious opening for white to the point that top player to not play it. For white, the aim is to keep black’s king in the center of the board, open up the position, and attack the king early into the game. However, it is a gambit. If this attack fails, black is potentially left with a very solid position, an extra pawn, or both. In this case, I knew how to defend against my opponent’s attack. This made the first six or so moves very easy to counter against. In the first 6 moves, I was able to take a pawn, defend against white attempts to retake my pawn, developed a pawn and knight to challenge a potential attack in the center, and kept everything else solid. Look through the first 6 moves of the game.
On move 7, I think my opponent’s brain stopped working. Black played Nxg5 putting it directly in line with my queen. On the next move, I quickly captured the piece.
From there, the game developed normally. My opponent moved more pieces from their starting position. I castled queenside and developed my bishop. The next important moment was on move 12 where I played f5. Initially, this does not seem like an important move, but it serves many purposes. Firstly, it attacks white’s stronghold over the center squares. f5 directly attacks the e4 pawn. In the case that white takes the f5 pawn, I can just take the bishop in e3 with my queen. Secondly, it gets rid of a weak pawn. The f-pawn was isolated and thus would have been hard to defend, especially with black’s rook already looking directly at it. While this did not change the dynamic of the game, not playing f5 could have changed the dynamic against me later into the game.
The next interesting moment was on move 14 when black played Bg5. My opponent probably thought that they had won an exchange. However, I spotted a game-winning tactic. Since the king was exposed to the a7-g1 diagonal, I was able to play Bxd4+. This unleashed the rook to attack the bishop, making it 2 attackers to white only 1 defender. At the end of this set of moves, I was up 2 entire bishops in material. Scroll through the moves until move 17.
The game then developed as I tried to take advantage of the extra bishops. I doubled my rooks on the g-file and put lots of pressure on the g2 pawn. To protect the pawn, white played g3, but this move lost the game. I played Bc6 and pinned white’s knight to the king. White tried to hold on to the knight, but I put lots of pressure on the position to the end that I capture the knight for free. At this point, white resigned. Move from this position until the end of the game.
Final position:
0-1
Key takeaways:
Don’t play the king’s gambit as white. It’s a very dubious opening and is easily refuted by anyone that has spent any time looking at the opening.
Keep your king as protected as possible behind pawns. Most openings techniques use castling to keep the king safe. If your opponent moves the pawn in front of their king, look for ways to exploit the position and attack!
Two bishops are better than one. Using these long-range snipers to look toward your opponent’s king can be deadly.