Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Fascinating Trap

The Scholar’s mate is probably the first trap beginners learn. When children starting playing chess know and understand it, they are eager to use it in their games and are happy to catch opponents into it.

It’s a trap easy to learn. The point is to prepare an immediate attack over the square f7. Its difficulty is low.

There are more sophisticated traps, like the Tarrasch Trap, which after a sequence of ten moves allows White to get a material advantage. That trap was the result of a deep study by Siegbert Tarrasch.

Other traps don’t aim to a material advantage but to more intangible benefits, like getting the initiative or leaving the opponent’s pieces out of play. One of them was used by Aronian against Carlsen, leaving Carlsen’s queen trapped in one corner of the board.

Today’s trap is special because of the variety of lines, astonishing moves, and because it appears early in the opening.

Trapping the opponent’s queen is always an exciting experience. Nevertheless, rarely the queen is trapped in such an unexpected way as in today’s example.

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