Double Take

When was the last time you were playing a game in one of your favourite openings and someone comes up with a move that makes you do a double take? One of the best reasons for playing a lot of blitz chess is in order to perfect your openings, and to see lots of ideas very quickly. I've recently started playing blitz chess again and I'm having a lot of fun trying out some new openings and some old favourites that I haven't played for a long time. One opening that I've played quite a bit is the Ponziani 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c3. Of course with these classic old opening games there are often the most bizarre variations hidden somewhere, and these can be so obscure that they are forgotten or rarely mentioned. I came up against one of these the other day.

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c3 Nf6 4.d4 Nxe4 5.d5 Bc5

I had never seen this move before, and it certainly won my opponent some time on the clock. It is typical of the 19th century, and it had been analysed by Steinitz.

Unfortunately for the online game I didn't know about any of this, but I do now. So I played terribly for one online game but have learnt some theory about an odd variation and seen some crazy variations. Take this queen sacrifice variation.

And finally, here's a game where white turns the table on black and answers black's quick attack against f2 with an even deadlier attack on f7.

I'm enjoying playing blitz chess again, and funnily enough I get a kick out of my opponents playing moves which make me do a double take. These moves help me to further understand  the openings I play, and usually lead to interesting and unbalanced positions.