The Sicilian busted?

About 30 years ago, FM Albert Chow told me that the Sicilian Defense was unsound, and that it was a matter of time before it was refuted. I laughed. He insisted that he was serious: while White's 1.e4 is an eminently logical move, 1...c5 was a silly move that does nothing for Black's development. Chow said that I had contributed to the ultimate refutation of the Sicilian with my win over David Sprenkle. I shook my head in disbelief. How could the venerable Sicilian, beloved by great players by Fischer and Kasparov, ever be busted?

Marc Esserman's book Mayhem in the Morra! features a newspaper headline on its cover: "Sicilian Refuted! Morphy and the Romantics Run Wild!" While I'm sure Esserman would admit that this is hyperbole intended to be funny and sell more books, he makes a much stronger case for the Smith-Morra Gambit than I could have imagined. As the following game illustrates, declining the gambit with 3...Nf6 (transposing to the Alapin Sicilian) is not a panacea. Was Albert right?

Black's resignation was premature, particularly given that this was a blitz game. The variation given at the end is Houdini 3's analysis of what might have happened.

Beware of queen checks!

Many, many opening traps involve a surprise queen check that picks up an errant piece. This includes the shortest decisive master game in history (apart from no-move forfeits, 1.c4 Resigns and such), given below. Black's 3...Qa5+ forks White's king and bishop, winning the latter. If you look at big databases, you'll see that this trap has also occurred a number of times since. Occasionally White has even drawn the game, despite dropping a clear piece on move 3! The website 365chess.com (highly recommended; it allows you free access to a 3.5 million game database) has seven games with this trap, two of which ended in draws!! The Black players who only drew were rated 2259 and 2199. These games provide further proof of the truth of the adages, "You can't win [or even draw] by resigning." and "The hardest thing in chess is to win a won game."

A trap in the Vienna Game

The trap below has caught a number of players over the years. After 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bc4, 3...Nxe4 is the well-known "fork trick," envisioning 4.Nxe4 d5, when Black regains the piece with equality. More common is the sharp 4.Qh5! (attacking both f7 and e5) Nd6 (virtually forced) 5.Bb3 (5.Qxe5+ is equal). Then Black can choose between the solid 5...Be7 6.Nf3 Nc6 7.Nxe5 0-0, and the wild sacrificial line 5...Nc6!? 6.Nb5! g6 (6...Nxb5?? 7.Qxf7#) 7.Qf3! f5 8.Qd5! Qe7 (8...Qf6!? is also playable) 9.Nxc7+ Kd8 10.Nxa8 b6, which Eric Schiller christened the "Frankenstein-Dracula Variation."

White's 4.Bxf7+?!, as in the game below, isn't very good unless Black falls into the trap in this game. After 4...Kxf7 5.Nxe4, Black should play 5...d5!, meeting 6.Qf3+ with 6...Kg8! 7.Ng5 Qd7!, when Black has the bishop pair, his king is safe, he owns the center and will soon drive back White's pieces. After the plausible 5...Nc6?! 6.Qf3+! Kg8?? (6...Ke8!) 7.Ng5! Black is suddenly lost. White has the terrible dual threats of 8.Qf7# and 8.Qd5#, and 7...Qxg5 8.Qd5# doesn't help.

The British chess writer G.H. Diggle wrote an amusing account of having lost a club match game this way (Davids-Diggle, London 1949) in all of two minutes, while his teammates' games were just getting started. His later investigation revealed the same game had been played in 1899 between Imbusch and Goering (see Irving Chernev's 1000 Best Short Games of Chess, p. 6) and that the British Chess Magazine in 1901 had described 6...Kg8?? as "a common blunder in this and similar positions."

The most useful opening trap you've never seen

You won't see many GMs playing it, but both on the Internet and over the board a lot of players play a sort of closed Sicilian with Nc3, Bc4, Nf3, 0-0, d3, etc. Many years ago I discovered an opening trap with which I have caught literally dozens of players over the years. These include a high expert and two A-players in serious OTB games. The trap is little known and rarely published, although it is in Karsten Mueller and Rainer Knaak's excellent CD-ROM 1000 Chess Opening Traps, which ChessBase issued a few years ago. On ChessGames.com (which has over 500,000 games), I found only a game in which White fell into the trap, but Black overlooked the winning move! Instead of 7...b6?, do you see what Black should play?