My experiment is inspired by Hikaru Nakamura's "Botez Gambit Speedrun". The term "Botez Gambit" refers jocularly to the act of blundering your queen.
Let's say you had the black pieces, and you're going to play against either Magnus Carlsen or an engine. You agree that your opponent, who has the white pieces, will give up his queen without getting too much in return.
Let's say the game goes:
[FEN ""]
1. e4 c5 2. Qg4 d5 3. Qxc8 dxe4 4. Qxb8 Qxb8
From the resulting position, I've tried numerous times to play with the black pieces and to defeat Stockfish under blitz conditions.
The engine evaluation happens to be that Black is ahead by 4 points, so I should be able to do it. But I just couldn't.
It seemed to me that there was so much counterplay available for white to use, with the light-squared bishop going to b5, the knight going to e5 or g5 in order to threaten f7, the rooks coming to the central files to go after a king that can't manually castle so easily... scary stuff, at least on the surface.
Therefore, the position raises my curiosity.
Here's my question. I'm not an expert, but I suppose many on this forum are.
If you have 10 minutes to calculate and strategize on your own, before playing a blitz game from that position, what would your plans and thoughts be?