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My best game today : positional queen sacrifice

#10 Does that imply you think ...Qa5 is inferior? If so, because of what?

After a chess break of some years i see it lacks popularity these days, but i couldn't find any crucial development that justifies this. Just a fashion thing?
I don't think it's inferior or anything, it's just that in my practice I've always had a much easier time against Qa5 line.
#4 So Carlsen, Caruana, Kramnik, Nakamura, etc etc play a 'basically disproved' opening again and again ... wut did you smoke, Zaitsev?
Hm, as I rewatched this game it came to my mind that you do a tactical / positional queen sacrifice that's actually a blunder. Yes you are still better after sacrificing your queen. But there was absolutely no need to do so (?). To allow your opponent counterplay by re-sacrificing his own queen seems worse to me than just improve your position by attacking his weaknesses and improve your own bad placed pieces. Otherwise with your sacrifice, black should be able to reach some kind of rook /rook & bishop endgame ...
Somebody may teach me if I'm wrong ;)
@stractic; #13.

Firstly, let's have respect, because all Lichess community deserve it.

Secondly, you are argument from authority which in this case, is a fallacy. As I said, in the masterful chess, it has been used and has served as a "psychological" defence against the huge theoretical preparation. Being a psychological weapon does not mean it could be consider good in itself. By this reasoning, the Polish Defence must be even better against everything: Kramnik crushed Carlsen with it, so, following the fallacy, the Polish is awesome, our "Chess Gods" played it.

http://ru.lichess.org/mwInxoDn

@szeweningen2.

I would not play play OTB-Blitz/Standard games with the Scandinavian. I have played it in bullet games at online chess, but, nothing else. I do not feel comfortable playing it with blacks, it is just an useless intellectual effort. White gets the initiative very quick and all black plans are based in the control of a file by a queen or, remove it to a more passive position.

@ Tomber
1. It's about the aesthetics.
2. When everything wins, you can do what you want
3. You wouldn't know that it was objectively speaking inaccurate, hadn't you looked on the engine evaluation.
4. Creative ideas and tactics is what I value very much at chess.
Creative players do create new ideas, whilst a player that might be 100 points higher rated, but very linear in his way of thinking, most of the time follows what he knows already to avoid risks or simply because he isn't able to create new ideas.
In one of Dvorezkis (probably the most famous chess trainer in the world) books I've read, he is looking at some games of a grandmaster who is not one of the best. He claims that you can learn a lot more from a creative player who is good, than from a player who is good but is not producing many ideas.

What MasterZaitsev is claiming here is very interesting. I do agree with him that black's play in the Scandinavian is most of the time quite simple and nothing for a versatility-seeking spirit.
It's good for blitz and rapid, because white has to think more.
I actually found a more-or-less refutation against the Qd6 scandinavian with a6, but I don't believe there is one for the other lines (btw: don't try to look it up in my games because I haven't played it online and no, I won't tell you).
What I'm saying is, that in my line black's play is already very difficult and it's all approved by our silicon friend.
In general the Scandinavian is simplistic approach for a different structure. I do think it is comfortably playable, but only up to a certain level, if you want to do so on a regular (!) basis. I'd say the threshold is about 2300 FIDE.
The structure in the normal Scandinavian is very solid, this b7-c6-piece (knight) on d5-e6-f7-chain, so I wouldn't say that one can find a refutation. One might be able to claim that it's sometimes difficult to play for an advantage with it on higher levels and I do agree, even though I'm not strong enough to say that it would matter a great deal on my level. What I do believe is, that I get the more comfortable game with white under a classical time control which implies a score of significantly more that the usual 55% for white.

@Tomber #14

You may call my queen sacrifice a blunder, but that "blunder" game made my day :)

See here an immortal GM game where Stockfish is unhappy about the initial move, which lead to an eventually brilliant move sequence by GM Short :

http://en.lichess.org/5CdaMla8/black#61

Also, read this interview with the creative top GM Jobava, and you will see that he does not put chess engine output at the 1st place.

http://en.chessbase.com/post/living-life-the-jobi-way-1-2
http://en.chessbase.com/post/living-life-the-jobi-way-2-2

Enjoy your chess ! :)
I always wondered why Bc8 is not possible in that game. In the comments they gave some weird variation, lol, but it's actually working for black it seems.

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