Queen Sacrifice beauty! Beautiful jewel of a game in the Sicilian Pin variation

Hi all

One of the more beautiful games I have studied recently was in the Sicilian Pin variation which in many ways asks for trouble. It gives White a dark square bishop without a counterpart and there are some amazing punishing resources that this gives White.

In this game, we see incredible exploitation of the Black King in the center

The Sicilian Pin variation is transposed into:

White plays in the most critical manner hitting g7 early

This seems a bit strange because it leaves White a whole piece down

Has White misremembered the refutation of the Pin variation? - d4 is dropping

Okay, White does have certain domination on the dark squares but is it worth a piece?

A calm move with threats of c3 and Bh6

Black plays a seemingly very useful defensive move to evict the Queen

White castles Queenside but isn't there a Qg6 resource now?

BEHOLD! QUEEN SAC ALERT!

d5 is tried

Mate in one threat - Rd8 mate threat

Renewing Rd8 threat

A glorious deflection tactic

Black resigned here - final position

Video annotation based on study

https://youtu.be/ByQ0ygxRPG4

Key takeaway points

• The Sicilian Pin variation fundamentally is a little suspect
• White has a dark square bishop without a counterpart in this game which can create seemingly magical resources, especially with King in the Center
• When one's King is in the center don't underestimate the power of human imagination to exploit that fact
• When things are a little suspect intuitively, there are probably amazing resources reinforcing that intuition

Hope you enjoyed this blog :). Any likes and follows are really appreciated. Also, I also have some interesting chess courses at https://kingscrusher.tv/chesscourses to check out.
Cheers, K