The Sexiest Chess Move I've Ever Played

Every chess player is inspired by the beautiful checkmating combinations of past masters. One of the things that got me hooked on chess was Fred Reinfeld's 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate (a great book if you are 1200 and don't check the solutions with an engine...), and today, one of my all-time favorite books is Tal and Khenkhin's 1000 Checkmate Combinations. If you haven't read it yet, I HIGHLY recommend it. I couldn't imagine any chess fan not loving this masterpiece.

I've always dreamed of playing a checkmate like the ones in these anthologies myself. My best combination over the past decade was a nice, thematic tactic, but there was no checkmate - no cherry on top. Finally this year, I got the chance to play a great checkmate, a pretty queen sacrifice with a nice forcing sequence.

In addition to the euphoria of actually getting to play this checkmate, when I posted it on Twitter, it became my most popular tweet ever - viral by chess Twitter standards. My dopamine receptors were firing on all cylinders! It even made it to the top of reddit, and we turned it into a daily puzzle on Chess.com. Even the chorus of "ez" from our friendly daily puzzle commenters didn't dampen my enthusiasm.

Anyway, here's my small contribution to the litany of pretty queen sacrifices leading to checkmate. I hope you enjoy it!