Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Oh! My queen!
In the 45th Chess Olympiad that took place in Budapest (Hungary) 380 national teams from almost 200 countries competed in an 11-round Swiss tournament played over four boards.
It’s worth mentioning that there is a wide range of participants both by rating and age. For instance, the oldest player in Budapest was the 80-year-old WIM Rani Hamid (ELO 1900) from Bangladesh playing her 20th Olympiad. At the other end of the scale, the youngest participants were two nine-years-olds lady players. WFM Bodhana Sivanandan (ELO 2196) from England who played her first Olympiad. And Skye Attieh (ELO 1675) from Lebanon.
Players’ rating in the open section going from the highest Magnus Carlsen’s 2832 to unrated players. When experimented players face weaker opponents is highly probable to see some examples of traps and severe mistakes. That is what indeed happened in some games. Today’s trap appeared in the match between teams Iceland and Equatorial Guinea from round 1. In board 1 played Icelandic GM Gudmundur Kjartansson against FM Xavier Mompel from Equatorial Guinea.
GM Gudmundur Kjartansson unexpectedly fell for a trick when he pushed his b-pawn in move 23.
Kjartansson was sure that his opponent couldn’t capture the b-pawn because he would lose the rook on a7. However, Mompel had seen further!
Everyone can be the victim of traps or make mistakes. In today’s example, a GM played unaware of the risk and didn’t see that his queen was in danger.
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