Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Firouzja’s Scholar’s Mate

Friendly games are good opportunities for practicing new ideas or testing your opponent’s knowledge of unusual openings. Besides that, those games make a lot of fun. I found today’s game on chess.com. Contendents are GM Alireza Firouzja and GM Hikaru Nakamura. They played it in 2019 when Firouzja was in ascending progression. It was a blitz game, played online at a time control of 3 minutes without increment.

Firouzja tried to surprise his opponent with the Scholar’s Mate. It makes sense because of the short time control and the many complications arising, as you will see in the following notes and comments:

Despite the high speed imposed by the time control in that blitz game, it is impressive how many good moves both players found. It shows us the deep understanding top players have from this game.

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