Showing posts with label Closed Sicilian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Closed Sicilian. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

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?

An opening trap

Here is an opening trap with which I have caught more than one opponent in Internet blitz games. White's sixth move is very plausible (correct is 6.Qe2+! Be7 7.Nd5 with approximate equality), but loses a piece.