The Killer Trap

Pictures taken at chess tournaments can tell fascinating stories. Just look at the faces of the players and spectators, and you'll see the whole gamut of human emotions. The Washington Chess Federation has recently posted a brilliant photo on its Facebook page.

To understand what's going on in that photo, let's first take a look at the position featured at the center of the picture.

Now we can understand the broad smile on the face of the boy playing White as well as the sorrow of the girl playing Black. Also, look at the face of the spectator. You can see a lot of different emotions there, but one of them, I think, is "I wish I trapped my opponent into something similar." Finally, a boy in the background is probably not even aware of the tragedy/triumph that is happening right next to him since he is too busy with his complicated King's Indian.

The position on the board also brought memories from my childhood. In one of my first articles here, which was published 15 years ago, I told the story of how I was trying to devise traps for my opponents in various openings. This was one of those numerous traps. I even called it the Killer Trap in the Italian game since it worked flawlessly in blitz games. In case you, my dear readers, would like to try it in your games, here are some lines you can expect. 

1)  7...d6? This popular move falls into the Killer Trap. No doubt that many of your opponents will be as sad as the girl in the picture above.

2) 7...Nxe4? is another popular but equally poor choice. The refutation has been known for about 120 years:

World champion Alexander Alekhine used this line in his famous blind simuls:

3) 7...0-0? Many inexperienced players use a simple but wrong rule: when you don't know what to do in an opening, just castle your king into safety. In this case, castling is a clear mistake since the white center quickly pushes Black's pieces back:

4) 7...d5! is definitely Black's best response which allows them to immediately challenge White's center. Even here, Black is still not out of the woods, as the following game of our old friend, FM Marco Riehle, demonstrates:

Finally, let me show you a funny game that shows that Black must avoid many traps to survive, which is not an easy task in a blitz game:

The lesson here is quite obvious: whenever you see a picture taken at a chess tournament, pay attention to a position on the board and the players' expressions— you might learn something new and exciting!