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.

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 ;-)

Smothered mate

Got this position in an online blitz game. My opponent actually wasn't a complete patzer as his position would indicate...he just clumsily allowed d4-d5-d6 with tempos in the opening (hitting Nc6 and then Be7) and it spiralled pretty quickly out of control for him. Anyway I got to deliver a smothered mate in a slightly different form than it usually appears (The standard Nf7-h6, Qg8+ and Nf7#)

1.Ng6+ Kh7 2.Nxf8++ Kh8 3.Qh7 Nxh7 4.Ng6#

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!

Nice simplifcation pattern

Had white here in this position against an IM on ICC.



It woud be easy to wrong here with 30.Qxa6? and all of a sudden black is better after 30...Qd2! Instead I found a forced way to get a winning endgame.
30.Qxd8! Bxd8 31.Nc6 Bb6 32.cxb5 axb5 33.Bxf6 gxf6 34.a4!



It is clear now that the a-pawn just can't be stopped as the knight controls all the black squares along the way to queening. And the black king is too far away to push the knight away from it's strong post!

Tactics - The Karpov choke

In the Czech Open 2004 in Pardubice my opponent allowed me to finish the game with a well known trick. The answer is in the comments. If you haven't seen this trick before or you would like to learn more about this trick then watch Pattern Recognition #4:

http://www.chessvideos.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=4179

Mating patterns: Blackburne's Mate

I have a nice video series on chess patterns on Chessvideos.tv called "Pattern Recognition". All in all I have made 5 videos in this ongoing series.

If you have seen video #1 you should have no problems solving this puzzle: (black to move)



Solution appears at the end of this post.

The pattern occurs more often in this form:



This is from Stefansson - Bruzon.  Stefansson finished the job with 22.Qxh5!
Black loses on the spot as he just lost a piece, mate is threatened on h7 and he can't take the queen because 22....gxh5 is met with 23.Bxh7#

In our puzzle position black wins with 1...Qxf3! 2.gxf3 Bxf3+ 3.Kg1 Ng4 and mate with Bh2 next cannot be avoided. Sort of going the backdoor into our mating pattern!

To learn more about this pattern and some others you can watch my video on Cv.tv:

http://www.chessvideos.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2484