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Opening Traps in Chess

Opening traps in chess are fun when the opponent runs into them. This shows how quickly a game of chess can be lost if you make one bad move.

“It is said that an ounce of common sense can outweigh a ton of ‘variations’.”
Savielly Tartakower – Chess Master

Chess opening traps will deepen your understanding of chess tactics. You will probably never run into these chess variations at all in your own chess games, because it is not very likely that your opponent will play exactly like this. Just memorize the chess ideas. You can use them in your own games of chess in different ways sooner or later.

The Lasker Trap

Old Benoni Trap

Please don’t play for such a chess traps, because this will not work out in the long run as good players know all cheap traps. It is not worth it to employ more sophisticated traps on a higher level as it seldom happens that your opponent runs into it. Just understand chess better, this will work always.

I have done it, so I know. I was waiting 15 years to play my favorite Scandinavian opening trap that goes over many moves. When it finally happened in a game, I had to think for ten minutes to remember the variation and I searched desperately for it in my memory bank – called “brain”.

Finally I remembered and I won. Boy! This was a terrific feeling, because my opponent was fairly strong and I was running a devastating attack against his kingside. This was great fun, but who wants to wait 15 years to be able to play a certain variation?

However, replay some interesting traps below and enjoy it. Some traps take a lot of moves until you see the result. So a trap is not always a two-move-sequence or so, but can go over a number of moves before you realize what happened.

Traps in Chess Openings

Flip Board: Press F-Key (or click e7 or d2 on top) Select a game: Click on grey bar

Famous Chess Games
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How Chess Grandmaster Igor Smirnov developed his chess teaching system.