A wonderful mating theme from ICC game

My friend and teammate from the Vestmann Islands team was playing a 3-minute game on ICC vs a Grandmaster and finished him off with a mate in 3 in this position.


1.Qf6!! Nxf6
2.Bg7!! Kxg7
3.h8=Q

Aside from being very beautiful and clean, this mating pattern also has a nice aesthetic geometry to it. White makes successive checks on the diagonal squares, f6, g7 and h8 and each time with a different piece! This could possibly be unique but I'll leave that to someone with good searching tools in databases.

A beautiful move

From Chernin-Morozevich



Morozevich played 10...Ne6 and went on to lose although he stands well here. He however missed a killer move and even Ribli who has short annotations on this game in my database fails to mention this move. 10...Nd5!!



White can resign! Both captures are met with ...b5 when white is in trouble because the queen can no longer protect against mate on c2 so white has to give up the queen. 11.exd4 is the best white can do but it's very ugly after 11...Nxc3 and then 12...exd4.

Missed tactic in Reykjavik Championship

Sigurbjorn Bjornsson (2317) was white here vs my uncle, Kjartan Maack (2168) in the 3rd round of the Reykjavik Championship, played friday the 14th of Janary.



Both were in some time trouble here (well as in every game really with G/90+30s). Sigurbjorn with white played Bh6 and eventually won after a hard struggle. He however had a killer tactic here.

1.Qb8+ Kg7
forced and now the hammer

2.Qxe5!!



With a simple winning endgame! A typical tactic that most chessplayers would find if it was a tactical puzzle but very hard to see in a game, especially down to the last few ticks on the clock!

Van Wely scalp

No....it wasn't me, it was Jake Kleiman rated USCF 2453 in the North American Open. I was browsing through the game and naturally I was curious to see how Van Wely lost with white as it's normal for him to be at or very near the top in these American Opens.



After maneuvering around for 20+ moves trying to find ways to go forward, make his king safe and make good on his extra pawn....he got hit with an unexpected tactic in his position.

52...Rxc5!

A bolt out of he blue...last move 52.Qd5 was meant to prevent that! Now it all falls apart for Van Wely. He can't take the rook lets look at that:

53.Qxc5 Qd1+ now 54.Kc3 meets 54...Qd3# and I'll leave it as an exercise to find the mate if 54.Ka2.

After 53.Qd7 Bd3 Van Wely could have resigned but managed to fight for another 30 moves before being forced to throw in the towel.

ICC tactics

From a 3-minute game tonight. I was white vs PenelopeCruz



Black is probably fine, even slightly better after 30...exd4 since d5 is likely to fall. He however got fancy with 30...Qxd5+ which is tempting. Take a pawn with check and then take the bishop. However I had a nice shot 31.e4! Qxe4+ 32.f3 and white wins a piece since black can't take the bishop and save the queen and rook with one move, also the bishop conveniently covers Rb2+

More patterns

I played a bullet game with my best friend many many years ago. I kept it, it was a fairly unintereting game as most bullet games are...however:



After I played Kh1...having used very little time he played immedately 26...Qc7 setting up a trick which I fell for I played 27.Ref1 and he played the nice move 27...Bg1!



A very nice move, maybe not hard to spot but impressive to find using almost no time (1,5second spent on Qc7 and Bg1). The reason he found it was we had just before that looked at Tim Krabbe's page. He has a section there called "The Ultimate Blunder" which is resigning in winning positions. The first example of this that he quotes is Von Popiel - Marco



Marco resigned here thinking he was losing the pinned bishop on d4....however 36...Bg1! turn the tables!

A miss by Kasparov

I saw some simul games by Kasparov in this newspiece on ChessVibes some time ago:

http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/kasparov-on-the-fide-elections-carlsen-and-more/#more-31172
(at the bottom of the page)

I looked at the game Kasparov-Paul De Vos (the 4th game). The opening moves were:

1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 e6 4.Nf3 g6?! 5.c4 Bb4+??



Kaspaov played 6.Bd2 and won in 22 moves, however he missed the best move and my pattern recognition immediately went to work when I looked at this game. I had seen this before!!

It was on Tim Krabbé's page:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~timkr/chess2/diary.htm (check item number 381, marked with red in top corner of each entry)

The move here is indeed 6.Ke2!! and white wins a piece since after the knight retreats we play c5 and then trap the bishop with our pawns, be sure to check the Tim Krabbé piece, this is called the earliest king move to cause resignation!

So if the greatest player in the world has holes in his pattern recognition, we don't need to feel bad about our quick loss in an online game on ICC right? It was a simul but still I'd expect the best player in the world to have seen this ;-)

Fantastic miss in the Icelandic League last year

GM Helgi Olafsson had white for the Vestmannaeyjar team (which I now play for) against the team of Fjolnir's Faruk Tairi from Sweden. He just played 32.Ng7?? which looks good, attacks g6 and he indeed won after 32...g5? 33.Bxd4 etc. He would have been in for a huge shock had black found a strong move in the diagrammed position.

As an amusing anecdote, it was more of a shock that the chessboard got hit with a snowball! Some annoying kid entered the hall and randomly threw a snowball into the crowd of about 400+ chessplayers and randomly hit this game!



32...Bg5!!

This might have been more of a shock than the snowball had Faruk found this move! White probably just loses in all lines.

33.Qxg5 is met with 33...Ra1+ and 34...Nxf3+ winning the queen and...
33.Bxg5 Rc2+ 34.Kd1 (34.Kb1 a2+ 35.Ka1 Nb3#) a2 -+

Find the strongest move

What's the absolute best continuation for white here.......and the most crowdpleasing ;-)

Patterns at work

Do you think knowing the following mating pattern:

Would help you find the win in the following position:



See if you can before I post the answer in the comments!

Endgame mate

Mates in the endgame are often amusing and also instructive. Here white came up with a nice mating net:



1.Rh3+! Bxh3 2.gxh3 Rhc8 3.Rg2+ Kh3 4.Kf2!

It's always very aesthetic when material is sacrificed and then followed up with a quiet move. After these calm king move, black has no defence against the threat of Rg3++ followed by Rh3#



It should be noted that 2...Rb5 is a better defensive try but on the other hand instead of being immediately mated black loses material after 3.Rg8+ picking up the h8 rook.

ICC Tactic to beat a GM

Got this position in the 5-minute pool with black against GM Legko who is the very strong Oleg Korneev. I played a ...Nf6 against the Tarrasch variation of the French and found a slightly non-standard tactic for this line.



17...Nh3+!

A good move but only second best, 17...Nxg2!! probably does the job slightly better ;-)

18.gxh3

18.Kh1 Rxf3 -+

18...Rxf3 19.Bh6 Bf4! 20.Bxf4 Qxf4 21.Rcd1 Raf8



And here my position is so overwhelming that even I couldn't blow this despite some decent efforts.....0-1 and a good scalp ;-)

Tactics from Malakhov-Grischuk, Russian Superfinal

This position occured in Malakhov-Grischuk in the 7th round of the Russian Superfinal. Malakhov just played 39.Bh4 which is a surprising blunder in an equal position. At the moment white has an extra pawn but black can regain the pawn on h6 at his leisure so material is effectivly equal. Can you find the sequence that won black a pawn and eventually the game? Remember what Nunn said about lose piece, they usually drop of....but in this case the looseness of some white pieces was used to win a pawn!

Tactic from a live blitz game

Played some live blitz games with friends last night while sipping on a few and having a good time. In one of the games I found a nice way to take advantage of the weak back rank after white played Bg3-h2 on his last move!

Elementary tactics

This position occured in one of my blitz games yesterday. Should be elementary but all the same neat. I'll place the answer in comments.



White to move.

Analysis from Adams-Howell

20.Nf7!! +-

On Chess.FM, GM Yasser Seirawan called this move a "Hootsie Tootsie!"

Calculation smalculation

 

This position I got in a league game in 2005 against my friend and great guy Robert Lagerman. We've had some interesting games in the past and this one was also in that category. Robert has more or less played Benko his whole career but shied away from it against me, often opting for the Benoni because of and early Nc3 line that I used  to be good at and scored some convincing wins in. So we could say he surprised me in this game by returning to "beaten paths"!?

Anyway in this position I made a pretty good calculation. White should play 1.Nxb4!
Now black's only attempt is 1...Re8 trying to trap the queen as 1...cxb4 2.Ng5 followed by Ne4 keeps two healthy extra pawns and black should go down more or less without a fight. Here I have the great move 2.a5!!



Black must recapture with the rook. The queen has no squares that doesn't lead to exchanges or the loss of the d6 pawn so 2...Rxa5 3.Nc6! Rxe7 4.Bxa5 Qb5 5.Nxe7+ Kf8



Last moves have been fairly forcing and now I had calculated that 6.Bd8 should keep the extra piece. But the computer finds the brutal 6.b4!! which wins. 6...Kxe7 7.bxc5 Qxa5 8.Rxb7+ followed by Ng5 and black stands horribly. 6...Qd7 there doesn't seem to be an escape for the bishop but...7.Nc6! now if 7...Bxc6 then 8.Bxf6 and then I take the bishop on c6. 7...Nxd5 8.Na5



Next move I get the bishop out of dodge! It is true white retains better chances but not as simple as I thought. Anyway it would have been fun if I had played this and maybe I would have found b4!! but in any case I would never have lost here and probably won. So going back to the original position....



I was so excited when I saw all this and I would save my bishop with tactical means that I played 1.a5?? mixing up the move order (1.Nxb4 remember!) and got hit with 1....Nbxd5! and black got a better ending and I suffered and lost in 50-60 moves ;-(

Comical finish in recent game

This position was seen in a recent game between young GM Dariusz Swiercz from Poland vs IM Twan Burg from the Netherlands.



Black is doing a great job of outplaying his opponent (the eventual winner of the tournament) and one would think that white would have to suffer for a long time in this position! Let's see what happened:

62. Ra4+ Ke3 63. Ra3+ Kd2 64. Rd3+ Ke1 65. Kg1



Hmmm...well black has activated his king but now it's a little cramped and white all of a sudden threatens Nf2 with a mate threat on d1. So black reacts, probably thinking he has this under control.

65...e4 66. Rd4 Rb6 

Probably intending to meet 67. Nf2 with 67...Rb1 stopping the mate.

67.Nf4 exf3 68.gxf3

68. Nxd5 Nxd5 69. Rxd5 f2+ followed by ...Kxf1 and black wins. Now Ng2# is threatened so...

68...Bxf3



69. Be2!   Ooooopps!

Suddenly mate is again threatened on d1. And stopping it with Rb1 loses the f3 bishop with continued mate threats.

69...Bxe2 70. Ng2#

A truly comical ending that deserves a diagram!



If in doubt, checkmate!

Tactics in yesterdays online games

I found some neat and unusual tactics in yesterdays online blitz games. While I feel good finding these I also need to stop playing 3 0 as the quality of games is close to dramatically better in online 5 0 games vs 3 0 games. Time is just too huge a factor in 3 0 and it annoys the hell out of me to build up good positions only to be flagged by an opponent who did close to nothing constructive the whole game.

But such is life...we need to take the positive out of these games and I was happy with these tactics.

#1 White to move



#2 Black to move

Calculation exercise

This is a good exercise in calculation/tactics. Does the tempting move 20.Nxg5 work? The main idea being to answer 20....Qxg2 with 21.Nxe6+ ??