Nakamura–Duda: An Immortal Game

I remember watching this game live back in 2019, and although plenty of people will already know it, it is one of those games that absolutely deserves to be revisited.
The most remarkable part is not simply that Duda sacrifices his queen twice. It is the way the whole dynamic between the queens changes throughout the game.
Early on, Nakamura and Duda both avoid exchanging queens because neither wants to help the opponent develop. Later, after Duda's queen invades on a3 and White's king comes under enormous pressure, Nakamura suddenly becomes desperate to exchange them.
But it was already far too late.

An Innocent Petrov

From Avoiding a Queen Trade to Begging for One

That is what makes this game so memorable to me.
Go back to the position after 5...Qe7. The queens are directly opposite each other, and exchanging them seems almost inevitable.
Yet both players keep refusing.
White does not want to play Qxe7+ because ...Bxe7 develops Black's bishop. Black does not want ...Qxe2+ because Bxe2 develops White's bishop. Each side believes that making the exchange first would slightly improve the opponent's position, so the queens stayed on the board.
And then, all of the sudden, Duda's queen reaches a3 with 11...Qa3!!, plants itself right next to Nakamura's king and cannot even be captured. From that moment onward, the queen that White had previously been reluctant to exchange becomes the piece Nakamura most desperately wants to get rid of.
White gets several chances to steer toward simplification but keeps resisting, probably because entering an endgame down a pawn would mean accepting that the opening had gone wrong.
Eventually Nakamura finally plays 19.Qc2, effectively offering the queen trade.
Duda's response?
He sacrifices his queen instead.
19...Qa1+!!
There is something wonderfully backwards about the entire sequence. On move five, Nakamura could have exchanged queens but did not want to. Fourteen moves later, he finally wants them gone, but Duda's queen has become so powerful that exchanging it normally would almost be a waste.
Instead, it gets sacrificed to force mate.
What I quite like about games like this is that they show why opening study should not just be about memorising moves.
Obviously, Nakamura did not lose this game because he somehow failed to understand the opening. But for club players, the useful lesson is that knowing why the pieces are placed where they are, what plans both sides are aiming for, and which tactical ideas can suddenly appear is usually far more valuable than simply remembering a sequence of moves.
That is also the approach I tried to take in my London System course. Rather than giving you a huge collection of variations to memorise, I focused much more on recurring ideas, common mistakes, plans and tactical patterns that actually help you play the resulting positions over the board.
If you play the London and that sounds more useful than memorising endless theory, you can find the course here: https://payhip.com/b/XBDVa

Final Thoughts

The first queen "sacrifice" with 11...Qa3!! is technically not really a true sacrifice because taking the queen loses immediately to ...Ba3#. The second one, 19...Qa1+!!, certainly is.
But taken together, they make for one of the wildest attacking games of the Speed Chess Championship.
The real turning point was undoubtedly 11...Qa3!!, which must've come as a cold shower to Hikaru. Nakamura initially defended well with 12.Qb5!, but the position remained miserable to defend. The later Nf3-d2 manoeuvre lost valuable time, Duda's rook entered through the sixth rank, and eventually White's king simply could not survive.
It is also worth keeping the game itself in perspective. Nakamura was certainly not playing his best chess here, and he went on to win the overall match convincingly.
But as an individual game, this one is difficult to forget.
It first started as a quiet Petrov.
Queens that looked destined to disappear on move five.
Neither player wanting to exchange them.
Then ...Qa3!!.
And finally, with Nakamura effectively begging for the queens to come off the board:
...Qa1+!!
Sometimes keeping the queens on really does come back to haunt you.