vrijdag 24 februari 2017

QC vs NIC BOOK CHALLENGE: TYCTA: Signal 1: King position

Looking for signals
After my disasterous chess weekend it was time again to dive back in the book Tune your chess tactics antenna. To stay on topic of the antenna, author Emmanuel Neiman, talks about signals instead of weaknessess. There are seven signals, today we gonna speak about signal 1: King Position.

The king is the most important chess piece on the board. A succesfull attack against the king ends the game. This is the only signal that can lead to a forced win, the other signals, which we will talk about in later blog posts just point to ways of gaining material. We cannot sacriface more then we hope to get back, while in order to deliver checkmate, we can afford to give anything.

Lets move on to an example.



The position of the black king is not that good, it's blocking the rook on h8. The knight on d8 is poorly placed, it hampers the rook on a8. But the most important point is that there is a checkmate when the white rook reaches e8.

This is how we have to think!!!

We have picked up the signal, which is the most important point. We can now examine the forced continuations that may allow the mate to come on the board.


Gligoric, Svetozar - Rosenstein, Julis

Result: *
Site: ?
Date: ?
[...] The mate on e8 is defended by the bishop on e7 and the queen on d7. Our plan is clear now. We now can examine the forced combinations (elimination, deflection, decoy, pin, ... ) that remove those two pieces from their defensive task..1.£xe7+ £xe7One obstacle removed, now only the queen defends.We might take it, this is good enough by the way, but not the strongest, because the black king would get some breathing space on d7. Another idea is to deflect the black queen from the defence of e8, and we can do so with2.¥d6 Making use of the pin 2...£xd6 Black would also be lost after all other moves, because he cannot defend the queen. 3.¦e8#


A Chess player should know all the classical mating patterns (Arabian or Arabic mate, mate of Anastasia, Boden's mate, ...) by heart so he will be able to spot them by anticipation, before the position might allow their realization.

A good way to start is by going to the blog of James Stripes named Chess skills. In the right sidebar (scroll a little down) you will find his pamphlet "Checklist of checkmates" which contains a great deal of all classical mating patterns.

Have fun!








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