Originally posted by Hindstein After reading about some of the great wins in under 20 moves in another thread, I thought that is might be worth having a thread dedicated to those even earlier mates. This could be a valuable thread for learning as it could point to flawed openings and less well known traps in the opening.
I'll start the ball rolling with game that demonstrated the dangers of playing the Damiano Defence as Black.
Originally posted by slimjim If he had taken your knight then you wouldn't have checkmated him so soon.
True. And however, I expected him not to as I had recently read up on the fragility of this defence for Black - taking the knight does leave the black king exposed somewhat:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_chess_game
The thing was, 3. ... Bd6 was the worst thing he could have done.
This wasn't under 10 moves, but it clearly demonstrated how powerful well positioned rooks can be (especially when in the center files) and how sacrifices can truly be beneficial...take a look. 😳