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I'm a new player =I just started playing again after an over 10 year hiatus. I'm (sadly) in the 600s.

I've been studying openings and I seem to do better in games where I can use the Italian game or Ruy Lopez. However, there's a strange game that I continually lose a slow and painful game against and it's the family of plays that have the queen out causing havoc early. In particular, the [Wayward Queen Attack][1] has been at the heart of every game I've lost in the last 3 days.

I mostly contribute this to my lack of piece development out of fear of losing pieces to a queen. How should I counter it? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayward_Queen_Attack "The Wayward Queen Attack"

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    It might help if you could show us one of your games so we can see what you're doing wrong. I don't know what the proper tags are for this question, but the Italian game tag can't be right, your question is not about the Italian game.
    – bof
    Aug 27, 2017 at 3:42
  • See also chess.stackexchange.com/questions/4553
    – Dag Oskar Madsen
    Sep 4, 2017 at 8:48

7 Answers 7

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First of all, despite the stigma attached to early queen moves Nakamura has played the white side of 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 several times in top level play, so it is a move you should treat with respect.

The best approach is probably to play moves like 2... Nc6 to protect the e pawn, 3... g6 to kick away the queen, then Nf6, Bg7, castles to get your king safe. Then if the white queen is still in the middle of the board try and attack it with your pieces.

Then you are in a normal game and if you blunder pieces because of your low rating then consider that your low rating is probably because of your poor tactical ability. To correct this you need to work on tactics. Learn about pins, forks, skewers, discovered attacks, etc. and do lots of puzzles to try and improve.

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I have played against this opening in many blitz games online and I think it just amounts to unnecessary loss of tempo for white because because black can play 1.Nc6

protecting the pawn and also developing the knight. After white played Bc4 threatening mate on f7 black chases the Queen by playing g6, usually the Queen moves to f3 still attacking f7 then you can develop your other Knight by playing Nf6 white usually replies with c3 preventing Nd4... black usually has a good game after that.

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I believe that 2...Qe7 is reasonable approach especially for beginner. It protects the e5 pawn; it protects the f7 square: less things to worry about. Black development plan would be something like this: Nc6, g6, Bg7, Nf6, 0-0.

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Here's a great little trap where when you can try trapping their queen. The only out of the trap is accepting a queen exchange .

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I have never lost against this and only a handful of people have tried it on me. Straightforward development does the job very nicely. Be patient and just play positionally and black will get a good game.

Nc6 protects the pawn. Threatening Nf6 attacking the queen and gaining the initiative. White could try Bc4 to get a mate but P-g3 stops that and white has a misplaced queen and trouble developing the king side horsey as well as it could have been.

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Since White wants a scholar's mate, I will run over a sample line.

  1. e4 e5 2. Qh5??? Nc6 3. Bc4 g6 4. Qf3 Nf6 5. Qb3 Nd4!

Simply kick White's queen around while developing.

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Just play 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5 Nf6 3.Qxe5+ Be7 and you have a fine game, except for having one less pawn, which means nothing in the 600s. For that matter, the computer evaluates this position as an even game, meaning that Black has full compensation for the pawn.

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