Blitz Chess #15: My Opponent Forgot His Knight was Pinned

I got lucky with this game because my opponent for whatever reason just forgot that his knight was pinned to his queen and he blundered it. So I took the queen and had an easy game. If things didn't go in that route, I was going to be at a slight disadvantage had my opponent made more accurate moves. But as it stands, this was an interesting game for me.


Recently, I've been playing these somewhat passive types of openings by playing Nf3, g3, Bg2, e3, and d3 as a setup. Since I often played very open and sharp openings before, I wanted to change up my style and go for more closed positions because then I wouldn't need to make complex calculations when things get really sharp.

This isn't the best strategy but it has worked for me. However, one thing that I need to constantly watch out for is the right timing for pawn breaks. I can't keep my position closed for long and there's always the threat that my opponent will just start aggressively marching his pawns down the board and I will find myself in a tight spot, getting the life squeezed out of me, which has happened several times before.

It was around moves 8 or 9 when I felt that the suffocating bind was about to happen so I was preparing for it but thankfully I made enough leeway so that I wouldn't be in too tough a situation to get out of. As much as I try to avoid wide open positions because those make me really anxious, not being able to know what the outcome will be after the dust has settled, in the same way, being closed in just gives me no room to move around and that's when I find myself compromising certain areas of the board just to get some play.

But none of that happened in this game. Had my opponent not made a blunder, I would have to deal with his big center and more active pieces with a lot of space to move around. Of course, just because I won the queen didn't mean that I was winning. His rooks and minor pieces were more active than mine so even though I won his queen, I still needed to be careful not to lose mine. After simplifying though, things became easier to handle.

I ended up having to give up my rook for a knight so that I would have a queen and a rook versus his two rooks which is still a big advantage and it's a lot simpler to work against than a knight with all its trickiness. He was a bit ambitious at the end thinking he might be able to checkmate my king but he just hung his rook and I took it, then he resigned.