Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Nightmare Trap
Mixing chess schemes can lead to embarrassing situations and an ideal territory to fall into unexpected traps.
The opening of today’s game starts with the topic of central dominance which is common in the Ruy Lopez or the Italian game. Typical plans in those openings for both sides consist of carefully preparing a central expansion with pawns. However, in today’s game, the player conducting the white pieces went for direct central occupation even sacrificing a pawn. And his decision paid benefits. Black fell into a trap where evaluating all the variations is a nightmare.
In today’s game, Safarli caught by surprise his opponent by playing a secondary line in the Ruy Lopez.
It’s worth mentioning that this game belongs to the online tournament “Titled Tuesday” that Chess.Com organizes every Tuesday for title players. Time control is 3 minutes with 1 second of increment.
With such a short control, blunders are usual. But players also can’t afford to waste much time in deciding their moves.
To give you an idea of the effect that Safarli’s trap caused on his opponent, Coto spent 30 seconds before taking the pawn on move 8…Nxe4. And another 30 seconds before taking the crucial decision on move 11…Bxf2+. As a result, after 11 moves Safarli’s clock displayed 2:32 against 1:24 in Coto’s clock. At the end of the game, the remaining time for each player was 0:04 for Coto and 1:18 for Safarli.
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