Post your defensive brilliances! (Defensive Game Collection)

Post a game where you had to find very difficult or critical defensive moves to stay in the game! :)

Being new to the forum, I’ve looked at many threads where members display their brilliant attacks, but something I haven’t witnessed yet is someone fending off an attack brilliantly!

Attacking games are a lot of fun to look at, but I think defensive games should also have a special place in our forums too because many times defensive moves are only moves, whereas there are usually many good attacking moves in a given position.

Your game might showcase how you played a few prophylactic and housekeeping moves to remove your opponent’s threats before initiating your own counter play or it might be a complex minefield of a game where you were forced to play 10 consecutive only moves in a row and came out of the other side alive!!

That’s all from my side, I’m keen to see what defensive resources you have come up with. Old games, new games, wins, losses - all are welcome :)

@Equalibrium
I honestly can't think of any. If I find some, I'll post!

I have one I played about a year ago! lichess.org/UWjobgsI/black#64 this e5 move is actually quite interesting after 10. Nxf7 Qd7! 11. Nxh8 Ne5! 12. Be2!(forced, or else f3 is a winning attack), black can play 12...Be7! where the bishop will hold up the queenside from d8 and the king will make its way over to h8 and pick up a second piece for the rook

That was a beautiful game.

Was a very entertaining game to watch DaveyJones01, not accepting white’s rook was quite hilarious :D some very nice prophylactic ideas in there as well, thanks for sharing! PS - criteria updated, games obviously don’t need to be perfect :)

To keep the ball rolling, I’ll post two games of mine where I really had to put my defensive skills to the test.

Game 1: I completely misplayed the opening as black and had to muddy the waters whilst staying alive! 16...Bxc3 was a very difficult move to make as it simply looked like I was further weakening the dark squares and asking to get mated.



Game 2: This time I am in a completely winning position, however, my opponent does a great job in making the game complex by generating a lot of threats against my king. The computer evaluation says white’s completely winning. But when playing the position over the board, I had a feeling of whether I mucked up my winning chances. 27. Nh4 was a hard move to find as I had to make sure I didn’t give black any chances in all the proceeding variations. Further, I sacrifice the exchange and simplify to go into a winning endgame.



Hope you find these games interesting, let me know what you think :)

Very nice initiative. Here is my contribution.

Good games but tbh second one was one sided and he didn’t attack much

Petrosian-like exchange sac A-Cielbleu, I really liked how you handled that cramped position!

I agree with you virkoh, understandly I was up a lot of material, but when playing under those circumstances during the game, there are many lines to consider, regardless of whether my opponent plays the best move or not.

It was definitely intense from my side, because black might have had some pseudo-threats like Nh3+ and my pieces near his king weren’t well coordinated. Nevertheless, I agree with you that only a small portion of the game was defensive, it was moreso white just trying to eliminate counter play. I was able to give back some material to get out of that mess hahaha.

This thread may not be just for purely defensive games, because most of the community are only club players and I would be expecting too much from them if that were the case :)

Wow that Najdorf wasbrilliant! Was a funny game, weird to win without ever even developing half your pieces :)