Showing posts with label Tactic of the Day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tactic of the Day. Show all posts

Friday, 15 April 2016

Chess Tactic of the Day #1

A few days ago, I was playing a 1-minute game with the black pieces. After white's 36th move in this Dutch Defense, the following position arose:

Black to play and win.










SPOILERS BELOW




SPOILERS BELOW





SPOILERS BELOW





SPOILERS BELOW



OKAY SERIOUSLY

(In future I will try to come up with a better way of doing this).
If I had found 36...Nh3! I would have won on the spot. The point is that this cuts off the g1 square from white's king, and sets up the irresistible threat of 37...Qh6 followed by 38...Nxf2+. Despite having a couple moves, white is helpless to wriggle out of this, OR to create fast enough counterplay to distract black's pieces from the attack.

In the actual game, I had about 25 seconds left, and spent about 5 of them trying to make Qh6 work immediately. When that wasn't working out, I played the lemon 36...Ne4 and went on to lose.