| Oct-17-06 | | rwbean: It's so much fun going over old games with modern hardware and software! I vividly remember reading about this game in the local Sunday Mail newspaper in Brisbane. It was a "How to beat a GM" article. Also I had read about this opening trap in Barden's "Play Better Chess". Now with Rybka 2.1o and a dual P4-3.2GHz with 2GB RAM, I can "see" an awful lot more. I will still look back on this comment in five years' time and laugh though! There are five reasonable moves on move 5: Nxc3, Bb4, Qh4+, Nc5, and Ng5. Bb4 is good enough to draw and Qh4+ is supposed to be inferior. But even with Qh4+ Black retains the option of 6... Nxc3 so I don't agree. On move 6, Black can still play 6... Nxc3 7 bxc3 Qa4 =. 6...Nxg3 may be slightly inferior. Rybka thinks 8... Nxh1 is slightly inferior: its suggested continuation is 8... Bg4 9 Bg2 Nxh1 10 Nxc7+ Kd7 11 Nxa8 Nc6 12 Be3 Be7 13 Qe2 Rxa8 14 o-o-o Ke8 15 d4 (evaluation -0.15). I think the point is that if White tries 12 d4 in this variation, Black really can play 12... Bxf3 in reply, because there is no winning Bg5+ for White. In the game 12... Bxf3? is a big mistake. Rybka suggests 12... Kb8 13 Be3 Kb8 (evaluation -0.27). After that Black is in a very difficult position - White's game plays itself and it's no big surprise Black made a final blunder with 17... Kb8? instead of 17... h6. But the game was lost by then anyway. |
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| Jun-24-16 | | rwbean: Now Komodo 10 suggests 12... f6 is equal.
12... ♗xf3? 13. ♕xf3 is evaluating at +1.83 after 30 ply. 17... ♘e6 is another suggsetion but it's still too late. |
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Aug-13-16
 | | Domdaniel: <rwbean> I see you waited ten years, not five. Did you find anything to laugh about? I thought your original analysis was quite good. |
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Oct-10-22
 | | kingscrusher: GM beaten in 21 moves and I was sitting next to this game at the time. Andrew Hon is a great player who played for Barnet Knights and is a Vienna game specialist. This game is a key inspirational one for me to play the Vienna game - a great surprise weapon for the club player. |
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Dec-16-24
 | | FSR: In 2022, I wrote about this line in my forum:
<Have you ever wondered what the Würzberger Trap in the Vienna Game is? The first mention of it I could find is in MCO-5 (1933). It notes that after 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.f4 d5 4.fxe5 Nxe4 5.d3, Black should play 5...Nxc3 6.bxc3 d4. Modern theory agrees, with Stockfish 14.1 (depth 52) assessing this line as -0.87, i.e. large advantage to Black.
The authors of MCO-5, Griffith and White, state that the alternative 5...Qh4+ 6.g3 Nxg3 7.Nf3 Qh5 8.Nxd5+ "is M. Würzberger's Trap." I think the "+" after 8.Nxd5 in this context means "with advantage to White." White indeed scores well in this line (73.8% in 275 games on ChessBase Online). But Stockfish 14.1 assesses the position as 0.00 after 8...Nxh1 9.Nxc7+ Kd8 10.Nxa8 Bg4 11.Bg2 f6! (a move that has apparently never been played) 12.Be3.The Oxford Companion to Chess (2d ed. 1992) at 470 n. 628 defines "Würzberger Trap" much more precisely as arising after 8...Bg4 (this is the alternative to 8...Nxh1) 9.Nf4 Bxf3 10.Nxh5 Bxd1 11.hxg3 Bxc2(??) 12.b3. The book states on page 451 that the trap "was named around 1930 after the Berlin banker Max Würzberger, who spent much of the 1930s in Paris. Black's bishop on c2 is trapped (5...Qh4+ is probably an error)." Instead of the crass blunder 11...Bxc2??, correct was 11...Bf3! 12.Rh2 Nc6=, as in the stem game for this variation, S Dubois vs G Dufresne, 1863 (1/2, 40)! ChessBase Online shows five games that reached the position after 11.hxg3 between 1863 and 2006. In each of them, Black played 11...Bf3!, scoring two wins, two draws, and one loss. So the Würzberger Trap is not of much value. Herr Würzberger may be the only person who ever managed to pull it off! Hooper and Whyld are correct that 5...Qh4+ is an error, not because it gives Black a bad game, but because the alternative 5...Nxc3! 6.bxc3 d4! gives him an advantage.> Looking at it now two years hence, Stockfish 17 says that van der Sterren's 11...Nc6! was just as good as 11...f6! Both are equal. But after Hon's 12.d4, he should have played 12...f6!= instead of 12...Bxf3??, which loses. Hon played perfect chess thereafter to win the game. Van der Sterren may have overlooked or underestimated the strength of the crushing 15.Bg5+! |
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Dec-16-24
| | FSR: I see that <rwbean>'s conclusion eight years ago was similar: <rwbean: Now Komodo 10 suggests 12... f6 is equal.12... ♗xf3? 13. ♕xf3 is evaluating at +1.83 after 30 ply.> |
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Kibitzing
sac: 8.Nxd5