Gambiting a piece against a Titled Player

A couple weeks ago I played the strongest event of my life – Rubinstein Festival 2000+ and in that event I played 2 games that I think are really worth covering, starting with Round 3.

Opening

I was sitting at 1.5/2 demolishing a 2148 in the first round with an opening surprise 1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 nf6 3. d4!? (I used to play 3. f4, so he was out of book on move 3) and getting a 99% accuracy draw with Black in the second round against 2168. I got paired against a CM and let's just get right into the game.

This is a very fun line for Blitz so I was excited to play it in a real game. My opponent was prepared, so firstly I'll show you what happens if your opponent is surprised by this (very likely).

11... Qxd6 – what's the difference?

Now giving up the Queen for 3 pieces isn't a good idea, as Black will struggle the whole game to develop the queenside, while White will have clear play with pawns.

I've played both a4 and b4 with success. Even if Black doesn't blunder right away, White's position is still great, and the b7 weakness is difficult to play with.

11... Kf8, 12... Nge7 – the fun stuff

This is the most common continuation, and a reason why I love this opening.

14. Qg5 has a 93% winrate even though the position is -3. The reason I prefer Qh4 is it's harder to refute, and if Black decides to repeat moves with 15... Ndc6 we can switch back to Qg5. But this position can be played normally with 14. O-O-O, or 14. Rd1 with the LSB coming out to b5.

11... Kf8, 12... b6! – prepared opponent

Honestly I didn't expect my opponent to prepare for this game, but sadly I had already played this line in a blitz OTB game, so he wasn't surprised, at least not as much. Btw there are many games in Lichess Database played February 2021 between EnergeticHold13 and lykke, Black went for 14... Nd8 exclusively.

Luckily I was prepared one move more, so I didn't get surprised in such a sharp position. With some mistakes we arrive at an objectively equal position, where I should be having an easy time finding a prepetual if I need it, but my opponent still needs to respond accurately.

Middlegame madness

With my opponent spending over 50 minutes on 19 moves, the time pressure can also be felt.

My opponent is left with 5 minutes to make 8 moves to get 15 minutes bonus while I have almost an hour to figure out how to make my pawns go forward, and my king safe.

After all these tactics we enter an endgame where I'm up 3 pawns, but my opponent will try to pick one up with his 2 bishops. I still need to be careful.

Endgame conversion

Luckily I still have 30 minutes on the clock, so it shouldn't be that hard to convert

I won, and this game is my highest rated win yet. (1 elo more than the first round lol)

Final thoughts

I really want for this game to serve an example, that objective evaluation doesn't matter as much as you think. Don't be afraid to try out different openings, and go for lines, that aren't blessed by the engine. I played someone almost 200 points higher-rated, and he prepared against me. Still the practical aspect of the position proved too much too handle.

I want to cover one more round from the event, where I finally got to play my own novelty against the Najdorf! And I want to cover a couple of openings, but I keep bouncing between them, and can't settle for one... but they are coming, just slowly ;p

Thank you for reading! I really hope this game will actually inspire you to let go of the engine eval and be more free with your lines, and I hope you might be interested in this gambit aswell! Out of 23 Taimanov (w/Qc7) games only one person has deviated before Nd6+ by blundering their queen. I gave you basically everything I know about the position, and I believe it's enough. Good luck on your games!