Avoiding Chess Blunders: The Damiano Defense

I am beginning a strong push to become a better chess player. I am finding that one of the keys to my becoming an adequate player is avoiding blunders. I frequently trap myself in situations by not being aware of the ramifications of a move. I have decided to use blogging as a tool to explore situations I’ve been into help both myself and other developing chess players.

The following situation, called the King’s Knight Opening, is very common during the first two moves of chess games:

The white player opens the game by moving his King’s pawn two spaces to square e4 (This is the most common opening move.) The black player moves her pawn the same way. For his second move, the white player moves his knight to square f3.

I am sure even the most inexperienced chess players have been in this situation at least ten times. The black pawn is under attack with no support. There are a few things the black player can do to equalize the situation, including putting white’s pawn under similar attack (moving her King’s knight to square g6) or supporting her pawn by moving her Queen’s knight to c6 or her Queen’s pawn to d6.

There are also a number of things that seem to be good ideas, but are not. One of these is called the Damiano Defense, and looks like this:

It seems like a good idea. The black player believes she has protected her pawn with another pawn, which means that it is up to the white player to figure out a new attack.

However, it is a blunder. Watch how it unfolds.

The white player goes ahead and captures the pawn with the knight, after which the black player, thinking “what a stupid move,” captures the knight with her pawn. It looks like this:

Seemingly, the black player has gained a piece on the white player with no harm done.

However, look again. White’s queen is free to go all willy-nilly on the black player. Watch what happens next.

Bam! White moves his queen to put black in check. Black is in trouble now. Black has two ways of getting out of check, and neither of them are very good. I’ll show you both.

This first one (Green) is the bone-headed move I made a few weeks ago. To get out of check, I moved my g-pawn up to block the queen.

Stupid! The white player just moved his queen over to e5 and put me in check again.

This time it is worse, because I had no way not to lose my rook. This particular forik is a common situation for a new chess player to be in, and a classic case of chess blundery.

Starting once again from the point where the black King is first in check:

Black’s only other option is to move her king to e7, as indicated by the arrow. But white puts black in check again by capturing the pawn with his queen:

Black’s only choice is to move the king over to f7. Too bad for her, because she’s about to be in check again, this time from white’s bishop:

 

Do you sense the impending doom for the black player? Again, she is in check with only two moves. She could send her King to g6 to get out of the bishop’s line of attack or place her queen’s pawn onto d5 to block the check. Unless the black player sacrifices her queen, both of these scenarios are going to lead to Black’s King moving to g6 to leave the bishop’s line of attack.

From here, it’s pretty much over for black, as long as white knows what to do. One option is to put black in check yet again by moving the white queen to f5, from which black’s only option is to move her King to h6.

 

From there, white moves his d-pawn to d4, revealing check from the bishop.

 

Black has two options: she can either block the check with her g-pawn or with her Queen. Either way, checkmate is close. If black blocks the check with her queen, white will have checkmate the next turn by capturing black’s queen with his white queen. If it is blocked with the g-pawn, checkmate is still inevitable; it starts with white moving its king’s rook pawn to square h4.