I am a very, very amateur chess player, but one thing I have noticed about my game is that I am a far better player if I can remove my opponent’s queen from the board. A standard early move for me in pretty much every chess game I play is to use my own queen as a “kamikaze” to take out my opponent’s queen.
I’m just wondering if this is something that any professional chess players are known to do?
Check out these games.
It’s not a bad move if your opponent relies too heavily on his queen and indeed I have used this move to unsettle such opponents, but I’d be willing to bet that if you’re at professional-level play you can play a strong game without the queen.
In other words, it may well be a decent move against an amateur who is somewhat better than you as it removes a powerful weapon from his arsenal that he could probably wield better than you could have wielded yours. Against a professional player, however, you’re still screwed.
It seems to me if that’s an objective in your opening game, you’re often going to be losing tempo and giving up development to make that happen. That is, you have to bring your queen out, move it to a position which threatens the other queen, and then take the other queen, all at a time that your opponent can spend more constructively bringing pieces out onto the board and developing them.
Then again, there are certain situations where the exchange doesn’t really cost you in terms of development or may even benefit you. Queen exchanges certainly do happen high up the rankings, but they’re often done not just for the sake of reducing material on the board, but to create some sort of positional advantage like, for example, leaving a doubled pawn on the board or isolating a pawn, etc. It’s been awhile since I’ve studied chess, but I can’t think of any example of a player that would try to do queen exchanges as a matter of course. It would seem to be a glaring weakness, if anything.
The best move in chess is to surreptitiously set fire to your opponent’s trousers. This works particularly well in speed chess.
Professional players are, by definition, going to be pretty competent with whatever pieces are left to them. I doubt they would often exchange pieces just as a gambit, they’d be looking for an exchange that gives them a positional advantage.
If they are better than you with a Queen, they are probably better than you without one.
In 2000, the world championship match between Kasparov and Kramnik saw Kramnik adopt an opening strategy as black that included a very early trade of queens. Part of the idea behind this is that Kasparov is a very dynamic player, and the types of positions that resulted were not a particularly good match for this style. Kramnik won the match, as Kasparov was unable to win as white against Kramnik’s setup. More info here.
The next year, Kasparov was finally able to break through against Kramnik’s defense. Game.
Setting the board on fire also works well. My father always preferred wooden chess sets over plastic or metal.
Queens ignite faster but kings burn longer.
And that little slit in the bishop’s mitre? That’s to provide more surface area so it catches more easily.
Back to the OP, another situation where you want to make “even” trades is when you’re ahead on material. A queen and two pawns versus a queen and a pawn is an advantage, but two pawns versus one pawn is probably unstoppable victory. Of course, high-end players will usually concede well before they even get to the point where they’re behind on material.
I like to exchange pieces when I play. I find I do better when there are fewer pieces and more open space on the board. So exchanging queens would work for me.
I do agree with pulykamell however. Don’t go for the exchange too early. You need to spend your first moves developing a good position. If you’re bringing out your queen for an exchange while your opponent is developing other pieces, you’re going to end up worse off after the exchange. You’ll both be missing your queens but your opponent will still have the good position of his remaining pieces.
I find a good rule of thumb is the 7/10 plan. You should do seven things in the first ten moves: advance your king pawn and queen pawn, advance both bishops and both knights, and castle. If you’ve done all of these by the tenth move, you’re probably in a decent position on the board.
This reminds me of the time when I was in 6th grade, and had the rare opportunity to play our school team’s top board, an 8th grader. He played a move like Qd3, opposing my queen, with an accompanying comment something like “I want to get rid of that queen”. So I moved it away somewhere, and he played Qh7, mate. And not in the Aussie sense.
Thanks for the responses.
Kings don’t burn longer - they burn shorter.
As a chess player, I am probably only slightly better than I am as a joke teller, so I have nothing else to add to the good responses already posted.
Besides, [fnar] there’s nothing like a flaming queen to put you off your game. [/fnar]