The Deadly Queen's Dance... reversed
Submitted by
Yima5 on Mon, 11/10/2008 at 5:09pm.
A lot of people know about this trick, and even more have gotten it thrown against them. What is it? Something that I refer to as the Deadly Queen's Dance.
When white is trying to pull a Scholar's Mate, the queen will generally land on h5 before slamming into the precious f7 pawn and making the final kill (black lands his or her queen on a4). But most of the time the response is just to calmly move up the g7 pawn to g6 (white moves the b2 pawn to b3). But if black had already made that famous opening move to e5 (or white to e4), then the Deadly Queen's Dance is given an chance to shine again.
Some clever chess player figured out (and it acually seems quite obvious) that just by moving over that queen and capturing the e5 pawn (or e4 pawn), the king could be placed in check. Then, after your opponent moves over his or her queen to block, your retalliation is simply to diagonally race down with your queen and capture the rook that is left wide open.
After this, the following moves are generally to have the attacking queen kill bishops, knights, rooks, and pawns while having the opponent's queen trying in vain to kill it. Whenever you are the attacker, you smirk and are sure to have victory. But whenever you receive this attack, you feel terrible. But can you block it?
Simple. Let's say you are white and black captures your e4 pawn. Since you have to guard your king, just move your own queen up to block. Now when your opponent moves his or her queen down and takes that rook, move your knight to c3.
See? Some of you might have already used this. The knight guards the a2 pawn and blocks the black queen's exit. Not only that, but it limits the black queen's moves to only the one diagonal space it can move to: b2. This square is guarded by the bishop on c1. Now that your opponent's queen is rendered immoble, all you have to do is move out your bishop on f1 and g1. Then your king can castle with your rook, and then moving your bishop on c1 to a3. Bye bye, little queen! Even though you are going to lose both of your rooks and have a worse material count, it really does save you from losing a lot more.
But be careful! All this time your opponent is going to either attempt to save his or her queen through doggedly trading off pieces with you and possibly take one of those key peices required to keep your opponent's queen in place, which will also include the attempt on trading queens with you by taking yours promptly after you take his or hers, or your opponent is going to set up an attack to bring upon a checkmate against you. Both of these are thankfully fairly easy to avoid and shouldn't present too much of a problem. The key to guarding against one of your key pieces, such as you knight on c3, is just to block your opponent's attack before it happens. If your opponent plans to attack your knight on c3 with his or her bishop, just move up a pawn to keep the bishop from moving to the square needed to attack the knight from. Another way to guard is to simply make a replacement. If your opponent is attacking your knight from a longer range than you can prevent, just move your other knight to a spot where after have the knight on c3 taken, you can immediately capture the square again with your other knight. The key is just to plan ahead and count out how many moves you have before your opponent makes a threat. Make sure you have enough time to move out your defense, and, if you can't, find another way. There is ALWAYS a way to guard against your opponent freeing his or her queen.
Of course, you're probably thinking "Why not just find another method to block my opponent's queen with?" Well, that's probably the best way to deal with the Deadly Queen's Dance. But, of course, this trick is not always used how you think it will. The attack could come at any time, and from a large range of squares on the chess board, and all of us have times where we do not see these attacks. So, while it is always good to prevent, it is probably better to know how to counter.
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