Rook Pins Following Captures

I have this annoying tendency to overlook rook pins following captures, arguably one of the most common tactical motifs in chess, especially in minor piece+rook endgames. Yesterday, for example, I wasted at least 10 minutes of precious calculation time gauging a variation emerging from knight takes pawn, bishop takes knight, queen takes bishop (as seen in the gif), only to realize that the variation is a no-go due to the in-between move Re1. Even though this is a very basic and straight-forward pattern, certain subtleties are to be heeded, in particular: (A) can your queen or rook move out of the pin and counter-attack a hanging enemy piece? (B) if we’re dealing with a rook vs rook pin, can the pinned piece move away and protect your rook at the same time? If our rook is on a black square, for example, a pinned black-square bishop can move out of the pin and move to a square from which it protects your rook, rendering the pin harmless.

Rook vs Rook and Pawn on the 5th rank

Complementing the previous post: Once again, White to move, red squares signify Black king positions that lead to a draw with perfect play, green squares signify a Black king position leading to a win for White to move with perfect play. And once again, White’s standard plan is to cut the enemy king off with his rook. However, in some cases, for instance the first green file for rook pawns or the odd green square that’s very close to the pawn, White needs a king move or a check to win. So don’t move your rook heedlessly, thinking that cutting off the enemy king wins automatically.

Rook vs Rook and Pawn on the 4th rank

Based on Silman’s Complete Endgame Course and the Nalimov endgame tablebase, the following gif illustrates the rook vs rook and pawn on the 4th rank endgame. It’s White to move. If the Black king is on a green square, White wins; if it is on a red square, the game is drawn. White’s winning strategy usually consists of cutting off the king from the pawn as far away as possible, and then set up a Lucena position with his king and pawn.

Openings, Openings

In her new column at Chess Café, Abby Marshall sums up nicely the reasons for playing the Tarrasch Defence:

It’s a great opening for improving players, because it’s very important to learn how to play open positions with active piece play; while not any position can become closed, any position can become open. The Tarrasch can also be played against almost all queen-pawn openings. And, it’s fun.

This is exactly why I am currently building my opening repertoire around isolated pawns and opt for openings such as the Tarrasch. Prodigal Pawn has kindly agreed to share some annotated games on the subject of the isolated pawn, and has a freshly annotated game by Anderssen against Morphy up at his blog.

Meanwhile, Michael Goeller harkens to the Smith-Morra’s siren call. I’ve been playing the Smith-Morra myself against the Sicilian because I was concentrating on open lines and thought the Smith-Morra offered plenty of opportunities to practise attacking play. I’ve even scored a (dubious) victory against a 1750-player in a 90/20 game. However, I’ve got this hunch that the Smith-Morra doesn’t tend to follow “natural” attacking patterns, so I might drop it in favour of the Alapin variation — sticking to the c3-push but with a more solid long-term plan. In case you’re interested in the Smith-Morra, Michael links to a “super Smith-Morra webliography”. Good stuff.

Sacrifice for Check

Black sacrifices a bishop and a queen in order to promote his remaining pawn with check and transpose into a winning endgame:
The idea is reminiscent of winning the Lucena position with a rook pawn.

Attacking f7, Winning the Queen

Sacrifice on f7, followed by knight intrusion on e6, smothering the queen: Sacrifice at f2, followed by discovered check, winning the queen:

The Art of Blockade (I)

I was watching Dennis Monokroussos’ commentary on How Not to Play the Pirc, in which he discusses the idea of blockading a pawn with a piece so as to restrict enemy piece mobility. Black’s bishop blocks the pawn on c3 and remains active and at the same time thwarts White’s plan to intrude with his knight at d5 via c3 once the pawn moves. 

Knight Time

A guide to quick calculation found in Josh Waitzkin’s Attacking Chess.

Patterns in Kingside Attacks

In my experience, nothing benefits the aspiring patzer as much as listening to more experienced players playing over games and articulating their thoughts, ideas and plans. These days, luckily, YouTubers around the world provide us with plenty of opportunities to do just that. Three of my favourite contributors in that respect are Kingscrusher, GreenCastleBlock and Claus Jensen. Claus, I discovered today, also has an excellent blog at clausjensen.com. First, I would like to thank them for sharing their experience with the rest of us.

Second, I would like to point you to a video by Claus that ties in nicely with the Greek Gift and kingside attacking ideas that I have been concentrating on lately. The video features a game he played against the French Defence, and his commentary contains a host of ideas relevant to kingside attacks. An excellent training exercise, I believe, would be to set up the board whenever Claus says “decisive attack” or “Black’s lost here” and find the correct moves to prove him right (or wrong). Here’s the video in question. (I refrain from embedding as I prefer not to slow down the blog unnecessarily.) Enjoy!

Queen Versus Pawn on the Seventh (II)

I commented on a queen versus pawn endgame over at In Honor Of Nezhmetdinov and I’m going to seize the opportunity to refresh my endgame knowledge (most of which I’ve acquired through Jeremy Silman’s Complete Endgame Course). Previously, I posted the idea of getting the queen in front of the bishop/rook pawn. A second strategy versus the bishop/rook pawn is closing in with your king first. Since we’ve just acquired a queen, we’re tempted to check the hell out of the enemy king, somehow hoping to squeeze our queen in between the pawn and the king. But this often leads to a draw. A more promising way is to activate our king. Remember this: you can only win this kind of endgame if you can either block or snatch up the pawn immediately with your queen, or if your king is close enough to participate in the attack. In other words: whenever you play with a queen against a bishop/rook pawn on the seventh, consider the king moves. Here’s the sequence I suggested for Nez’s game; notice how White’s king does all the work while White’s queen patiently awaits her chance:

If I calculated this position accurately, then at no point can Black afford promoting his pawn because it would allow White’s queen to move in for a decisive attack thanks to the proximity of White’s king. Here are the variations I posted at Nez’s blog:

[...] I think the endgame is winning for White because White’s king’s already closing in. But it’s still tricky: After 54. … h2 (which I think is the correct move) 55. g8Q (also correct) Kf2 (what else?) White misses the winning shot 56. Kf4! If (A) 56. … h1Q 57. Qa2+ Kf1 58. Kg3! and it’s either mate or losing the queen for Black. And if (B) 56. … Kf1 57. Kg3! h1Q 58. Qc4+! or 57. … Kg1 58. Kh3+! (once again the king move wins; if the queen moves, Black has some annoying defenses by promoting his pawn to a knight) Kf1 59. Qg2+ Game over.

Edit: Ah, endgames are hard. Chesstiger made me go over my variations again. 56. … h1Q 57. Qa+ Kf1 58. Kg3? is a blunder! Instead, White must bring his queen closer: 58. Qb1+ Kg2 and the queen gets closer and closer with checks until …Qe2+ Kg1 Kg3! Also, White has an alternative plan: 56. Qh8! For variations, I refer you to the Nalimov endgame tablebase.