[Event "Wild Wild West - Atomic Opening History: Fangorn (1501) - Someone (1826)"] [Site "German Internet Chess Server (GICS)"] [Date "May 24, 1996"] [White "Fangorn"] [Black "Someone"] [Result "1-0"] [WhiteElo "1501"] [BlackElo "1826"] [TimeControl "2 12"] [Termination "Black resigned, 1-0"] [Variant "Atomic"] [ECO "?"] [Opening "?"] [Annotator "https://lichess.org/@/Chronatog"] [Source "https://lichess.org/study/QDGxSdxY/Q4hKNBBE"] [Orientation "white"] 1. e3 e6 2. Bd3 Bb4 3. c3 Bxc3 4. Qa4 c6 5. Qf4 Qf6 6. Nc3 Nh6 7. f3 Ng4 8. Qd6 { And here we come to the last atomic game from 1996 that I've got in my possession. It actually starts out rather normally but then Qf4 and Qf6 were key moves that are very modern. I'm not too sure about 6.Nc3 though, as Nh3 was probably better. But White made up for it with the nice 7.f3! and Black helpmated himself with the questionable 7. ... Ng4?? where d6 or even swapping queens would have been far better. Black can't escape the explosion from White's Queen. Black cannot move his King except to d8 and White just plays Qxd7, exploding Black. And we've come to a close of the first section of games from the past. We're able to see how some of the games have been rather modern or laughably wild . And that's what the Wild, Wild West era of opening theory was all about. We've seen a reliance on Bc4 and a common theme of Bd3, c3, Bb4 and Bxc3 explosions. We've seen nascent moves in opening theory being developed that eventually got integrated into modern opening theory. But most of all, we've seen how the game began developing from its earliest days and that some players moreso than others really grasped atomic chess principles. We even got to see the development of the Atomix engine. tipau: You're very restrained and respectful when commenting on these games. Personally these openings hurt my eyes! I'd tend to assume any modern moves played are more through luck than skill. In particular the Be6 game, Black simply missed white could play Qh5-e5-xc7 when playing 1...d5? It's not comparable to the modern variation 1.Nf3 f6 2.e3 d5!? because Black doesn't have any compensation down the f-file and White is just losing material for nothing. Chronatog: I think we've got the fortunate situation of hindsight and I can't really slam someone for playing terrible openings in 1996. 1998 and later would be a different story though... those players already had the Atomix book publicized and had every advantage possible that the 1996 players didn't. In 1996, those players didn't even have a single book to reference or anything to study. There were no databases and I doubt they even kept personalized copies of whatever they could grab on the servers. } { [%csl Gd7][%cal Gd6f8] } 1-0