A couple weeks ago Francisco Anchondo asked me to write a post about our game from the last round of the Larry Evans Memorial (which we played in March). We’ve played two games now and I’ve won them both, but not without a few close calls and moments of panic. I enjoy playing against Francisco because his style is in some ways a mirror of mine; he always fights for the initiative and is not averse to sacrificing material to get it.

In our first game I played 1. d4 and he answered with the Albin Counter Gambit. So this time I decided to start with 1. e4, and he replied with 1. … e5 2. f4 Bc5, the classical variation of the King’s Gambit Declined.

After the game Francisco told me that he had never lost a game before in this variation. It’s probably a good choice for a gambiteer. He doesn’t want to accept my gambit because psychologically he will be on the wrong side of the position. And in fact he offered a pawn himself almost as soon as possible, with 3. Nf3 d6 4. Nc3 a6. Here I could play 5. fe de 6. Nxe5, but after 6. … Qd4 7. Nd3 he’s the one having fun, not me. (Plus, I don’t know anything about this variation.) So I declined his gambit for exactly the same reason he declined mine. After 5. Bc4 Nf6 6. d3 Nc6 we are back in the main variation.

Position after 6. ... Nc6. White to move.

I’ve just started playing the 4. Nc3 variation again after about 15 years of playing 4. c3. So I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing yet. Here I played 7. Rf1 because I saw this move in a book back around 1995 and liked it. It’s a “zebra chess” move, waiting for Black to give me more information. If Black plays 7. … Bg4, then I can play the exchange sac 8. h3 Bxf3 9. Qxf3 Nd4 10. Qg3! and it’s better than usual because of the rook already being developed. Or if Black castles, White has the advantage of knowing where Black’s king is going to be.

That is, in fact, what happened: 7. … O-O 8. f5 h6?! The punctuation is from Thomas Johansson’s book, The Fascinating King’s Gambit, which is a must-own for all King’s Gambit players. He says that 9. Nd5! is “more or less a refutation of the whole line,” and that Black should have gotten the jump on White with 8. … Nd4 instead.

Unfortunately, owning the book does not mean I’ve read the book, so I didn’t know any of this. I played the lame 9. Bd2?!, one of those moves that is so bad that it’s good! In this game, it gave my opponent an incentive to play 9. … Ng4?!, a move that is extremely clever but probably premature.

Position after 9. ... Ng4. White to move.

Here I spent 36 minutes (!!) deciding on my next move. After the obvious 10. h3 Nh2! 11. Nxh2 Qh4+ 12. Ke2 Nd4+ White is just dead. The only move that I could find that avoided a debacle was 10. g3, but the funny thing is, it’s a good move! If Black plays the obvious 10. … Ne3 11. Bxe3 Bxe3, then 12. Nd5 poses a dilemma. If 12. … Bg5 13. h4 Be7 Black has managed to imprison his own bishop. If 12. … Ba7 13. f6! Bh3 14. Nh4! is great. But if Black doesn’t play 10. … Ne3, what was the point of playing … Ng4 to begin with?

Moral: 9. … Ng4 was cute but had to be avoided.

The game continued 10. … Na5 11. Qe2 b5 12. Be3 Nxb3 13. ab c6 14. h3 Nf6 15. g4 d5 16. g5?! I think this may have been a mistake. I thought that it was safer to keep my king in the center than castle, but I forgot the principle that you want to finish developing before you launch an attack. You don’t want to discover halfway through the attack that you need reinforcements and can’t get them into action in time.

After 16. … hg 17. Bxg5 Re8 18. Nh2 Be7 19. Qg2 Black could have taken advantage of the fact that I left my king in the center too long. Can you see how?

Position after 19. Qg2. Black to move.

A good start is 19. … de, because after 20. d3 White now can no longer castle. However, it’s even better if you start out first with 19. … b4! First of all, this undermines the e-pawn. It also sets a diabolical trap: If 20. Ne2 (a very plausible-looking move) now 20. … de 21. de Nxe4! wins a pawn. The main point is 22. Bxe7?? Qd2 mate! Or 22. Bh6 Bh4+!, forcing White to interpose a piece and lose material. The basic problem for White is that his control over the dark squares is collapsing, and his king is caught in the crossfire. A drastic punishment for failing to castle in time!

So White instead has to play 20. Nd1 or 20. Na4, but I think that Black has a very pleasant advantage after 20. Nd1 de 21. d3 Qd4. To keep from losing the e-pawn White may have to play 22. Bxf6 Bxf6, but now once again the dark squares are turning into a terrible weakness.

I think there is a lot to be learned from the difference between 10. … Ng4? and 19. … b4! Roman Dzindzichashvili called these “good” and “bad” traps in one of his few ChessLectures. A good trap is one that improves your position even if your opponent doesn’t fall into it. After 19. … b4, either White falls into the trap or else he has to move his knight to an inferior square. Either way, Black has gained something. By contrast, after 10. … Ng4, either White falls into the trap… or he doesn’t, and Black hasn’t gained anything. In fact, Black lost a tempo by having his knight chased back to f6.

Instead of 19. …. b4, Black played 19. … Bb7? You’d think that such an obvious developing move could not possibly be wrong. But it is! It’s all about needs and opportunities. Black had to realize, first of all, that he needs to seize the initiative away from White. If White is given the time to build up his forces on the g-file, then Black’s position will become critical. Second, Black had to realize that he has the opportunity to seize the initiative, by taking advantage of White’s awkwardly placed king.

Sometimes in chess, you have the need but the opportunity doesn’t exist. Other times you have an opportunity but the need doesn’t exist. In those cases you can and probably should bide your time and wait for either the need or the opportunity to mature. But when you have both the need and the opportunity to strike, then patience is no longer a virtue!

I replied with 20. Rg1 and Francisco played 20. … Qd6. Now I had the opportunity to play 21. Bh6, but not the need. I was very uncertain whether I actually had the advantage after 21. Bh6 Nh5 22. Bxg7 Bh4+! 23. Kd2 Bg3. At any rate, it looks risky for both sides.

Instead I simply played 21. O-O-O, figuring that I could postpone Bh6 until the time was ripe. This is a case where patience was a virtue. I felt that I could get just as strong an attack with much less risk by getting my king out of the center. Francisco played 21. … Bf8, a logical move shoring up his weak point on g7.

At this point both of us were getting pretty low on time. I had about 20 minutes left for 19 moves, and he had about 15 minutes. This made me feel pretty good about my chances, because I’m used to being behind on time. Not only that, I was able to find a good plan here. I realized that Bxf6 followed by Ng4 would be a very strong sequence of moves except for the fact that Black can answer them with … Qg5+. So I spent two tempi methodically removing that threat: 22. Kb1! a5 23. Qg3! I really don’t think Francisco had any idea what I was trying to accomplish with these two moves; they look very unthreatening. As far as he could tell, I was just dilly-dallying around, and true to his style he continued in aggressive fashion with 23. … a4.

And now is the moment when need and opportunity lock into focus. The need is urgent; if I give Black any more time he will play … a3 and … ab and I will be busted. But the opportunity is there, not to play Bh6 but to play 24. Bxf6! Qxf6 25. Ng4!, and now where can Black put his queen?

Position after 25. Ng4. Black to move.

Probably the most dangerous move is 25. … Qd6, but White’s attack breaks through just a tempo before Black’s. After 26. f6! a3 27. Nh6+! is curtains, and likewise after 26. f6! g6 27. Qh4 a3 28. Nh6+ Bxh6 29. Qxh6 Qf8 30. Rxg6+!

Now I have to admit that I did not see all of this during the game. I just sensed it. In fact, I didn’t realize until I analyzed the game today just how close this whole plan came to not working. (My analysis during the game was more like, “If he plays 25. … Qd6 I must be winning after 26. f6.”)

Instead Francisco played the move I expected, the move a human chess player in time trouble is almost certain to make: 25. … Qg5. Again, his thinking was probably very simple: “I’ve got to trade queens or else I will be mated.” And in fact, that thinking was exactly correct. But it cost him the exchange and a pawn, after 26. h4! (the point of 23. Qg3) Qf4 27. Nf6+ Kh8 28. Nxe8 Qxg3 29. Rxg3 Rxe8 30. ba. The rest was very easy.

Francisco, thanks for the great game, and also thanks for encouraging me to write about it. For the rest of you, I hope it has given you some food for thought!

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Last night Linnea, Thadeus and I drove up to Milpitas for round two of the Saturday Knight Live Marathon. Our results were just the same as last week: Linnea and I won, and Thadeus drew a game he should have won.

Linnea’s game was not much of a challenge, as her opponent was rated 500. Of course, ratings don’t win or lose chess games, so perhaps more relevant was the fact that her opponent hung a rook.

Thadeus said that he had a winning position and then just hung a knight. He said he couldn’t remember the last time he out-and-out hung a piece in a tournament game. He was going to resign, but he still had a pretty good position for the piece, so he kept on playing to see what would happen, and eventually he managed to draw. He was disgusted with himself after the game, but I told him, “The key thing is that you didn’t resign.”

My game was a really high-quality game, exactly the sort of workout that I hoped for when I signed up for this tournament. My opponent was an expert named John Barnard. It was a pretty complicated game, so I won’t show you the whole thing, but I will show you three positions.

Position after 18. ... Nb4 (White to move).

FEN: r2r2k1/2qbbppp/p3p3/1pP5/1n2NP2/4BN2/PP2Q1PP/3R1RK1 w – - 0 19

My opponent has just played 18. … Nb4. I thought for about six minutes in this position. Of course the passive 19. a3? would be terrible after 19. … Nd5, when the pawns on c5 and f4 and the bishop on e3 are all under fire. I spent a few minutes daydreaming about knight sac possibilities after 19. Ng5, but I just couldn’t see anything concrete. I finally decided that sacrifices would only work if there was already a serious bone in Black’s throat, namely a knight on d6. Didn’t Steinitz say that if you plant your knight on d6, the game will play itself? (By the way, I haven’t been able to find a reference for that quote on the Internet; does anyone know where it came from?)

So I played 19. Nd6, offering two different pawn sacrifices. I wasn’t really concerned about the pawn on a2; if 19. … Nxa2 20. Ne5 Black has wasted a tempo and White has gained a tempo for the kingside attack. It’s still not completely clear, but I was confident that something good would happen in this position.

However, Barnard played 19. … Nd5! and now White has no way to save the knight on d6. However, I did have a nice little trick here: 20. Bd4! This key move gets my bishop on a good diagonal and releases it from having to babysit the pawn on f4. The point is that if Black grabs 20. … Nxf4? then 21. Qd5 threatens mate and the knight, so White wins material.

Of course Barnard was not distracted by the f4 pawn and instead took on d6: 20. … Bxd6! 21. cd Qxd6. This is as far as I had gotten in my analysis. It was impossible to predict exactly what might happen here; I just felt that my pieces had good active squares, there were good chances for a kingside attack, and Black’s extra pawn is not exactly menacing at this point. Also, we have opposite colored bishops, so that if everything goes to hell and I remain a pawn down, I still might have a chance to draw the endgame. (Also, by the way, opposite color bishops can be useful for the attacker in the middlegame.)

So, basically an intuitive, speculative pawn sac. What happened next?

Position after 31. ... Qf7. White to move.

FEN: 2r2rk1/5q1p/p1b1ppp1/1pNn4/3B1P1Q/7R/PP4PP/2R3K1 w – - 0 32

Now we’ve skipped forward a few moves. White’s kingside attack has come into sharper focus, and it looks as if I can win my pawn back with 32. Nxe6, because of 32. … Qxe6?? 33. Qxh7 mate. Should I play that move?

By now I was down to only 6 or 7 minutes for the rest of the game — although with a 30-second time increment for each move, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Still, with not much time on my clock it would be easy to go for the quick solution of 32. Nxe6. But I’m glad I didn’t! Because after 32. … Bd7!, White all of a sudden has lots of problems: the knight is pinned, and the back rank is suddenly vulnerable. It looks as if 33. Re1 would be best, but then 33. … Bxe6 34. Rxe6 Rc1+! 35. Kf2 Rc2+! 36. Kf3 Nxf4!! is murderous. White can’t take the knight either way, and the rooks are forked.

I didn’t see all this, but I just saw that 32. … Bd7 was big trouble. In this position I want to be the one causing the trouble, so I looked for a good “troublemaking” move. Fortunately, I spotted one right away: 32. Ne4! The obvious threat is a fork with Nd6. (Steinitz was right again!) This move also puts some not-so-subtle pressure on f6. If Black ever moves his knight (or loses it, say, via an exchange sac) then White will get a mate in three with Nxf6+, Qxh7+, and Rxh7 mate!

The game continued 32. … Rc7 33. Bc5! This was another cool moment. If Black plays what looks like the most logical move, 33. … Rd8, then 34. Bb6! skewers the rooks. If 34. … Nxb6, then 35. Nxf6+ Kh8 36. Nxh7! wins. Black’s rook on d8 is hanging, and no matter how he chooses to defend it, he will lose his queen to a devastating discovered check.

I’m not sure whether Barnard saw this, but he played 33. ... Ba8 and now I just stepped aside with 34. Rd1. It’s amazing that Black has almost a whole rank free for his rook on f8 to go to, and nevertheless he can’t find a single safe square. So he finally gave up the exchange with 34. … Rxc5, after a very long think. The rest of the game went 35. Nxc5 e5? 36. fe fe 37. Rf3 Nf4?! (37. … Nf6 was a little better, but White is still winning) 38. Rd7! and Black resigned.

Final position, after 38. Rd7.

FEN: b4rk1/3R1q1p/p5p1/1pN1p3/5n1Q/5R2/PP4PP/6K1 b – - 0 38

To be honest, I was a little bit surprised that Barnard resigned here, because I was down to 3 minutes for the rest of the game (he had 11 minutes). The most cool variation, which I was hoping for, is 38. … Nxg2 39. R3xf7 Nxh4 40. Rg7+ Kh8 41. Rxh7+ Kg8 42. Rdg7 mate! This is always a great tactical trick to keep in mind when you have two rooks on the seventh rank.

Instead Black could take one of the rooks instead, 38. … Bxf3 or 38. … Nxd7 [Note added later: Sorry, a little goof here. When I wrote this I was still looking at the position after ... Nf6], giving up the queen. I had thought this might be a way for him to play on, but the key point is that he can never get to an endgame with a rook and a piece versus a queen. The best he can do is R+N vs. Q+N, or R+B vs. Q+N, and these endgames are extremely hopeless because of White’s well-coordinated pieces, the weakness of Black’s pawns and the continued vulnerability of his king. So Barnard was right to resign.

A very satisfying game, except for the time management. At one point I was 40 minutes behind on the clock, which is not a very good idea.

I’d like to mention also that Barnard was a very good sportsman after the game. He told me that I had just plain outplayed him, which (as I’ve mentioned before) is something that chess players rarely admit!

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It’s out! Today I received my copy of the June 2013 Chess Life in the mail, and of course the first thing I had to do was open it to the back page. Normally I start at the front, but this month, you see, they printed my article on “My Best Move.”

If you have any trouble finding it, look for this picture:

Pearl Grey and yours truly

I asked the editor to identify me as the “1,314-th Ranked U.S. Player,” spoofing the fact that most of the contributors to this column have much more impressive credentials. For example, two upcoming contributors are Alexander Shabalov (#18 in the country) and Yury Shulman (#17).

Now if you’re wondering how the #1314 player in the country gets to have a game featured on the last page of Chess Life, I explained the story in my blog post Right place, right time. Basically, I sent the article in, they liked it, and then a spot opened up unexpectedly and the editor thanked me for saving his bacon.

Despite the silliness of the cat photo and the tongue-in-cheek introduction, I’m actually quite proud of “My Best Move,” a move that was deeply unorthodox as well as totally winning, and I hope you’ll like it too. As the pull quote under the photo says: “In any single game, something sublime and magnificent may happen.”

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Last August I wrote a post called My First Chess Set/Board/Clock. But for some reason I didn’t think of writing the obvious sequel, about my first chess books. What does a player’s first chess book say about him or her? What kind of impact does it have on his or her future development?

In my case, I can think of several first chess books, whose influence ranged from zero to moderate. Probably the first book I ever looked at was An Invitation to Chess, by Irving Chernev and Kenneth Harkness. Though it’s old and probably only available in English Descriptive notation, I still think it must be one of the best beginners’ books ever written. I remember the silly photos of the pieces sized according to their value, so that you could see the giant queen was worth much more than the puny pawn. Still a useful lesson for beginners! I remember an illustrative game on Legal’s mate, although they didn’t call it that. A cool thing about it was that every move was illustrated, not by a diagram but by an actual photograph of a board with the current position. What a great way to make the game accessible to people who don’t know chess notation and have never seen a chess diagram! I’m surprised no one else has thought of it.

Chernev’s book was a hand-me-down from my father, so in that sense it wasn’t really “mine.” The same is true of another book, Reuben Fine’s 50 Chess Lessons from Modern Master Play. “Modern” is a bit of a laugh now, because the first edition came out in 1945! All the games were played between 1941 and 1944, which shows that the chess world did not stop during the Second World War. Although it’s probably a pretty good book, I’m afraid that it had zero effect on my chess development because it was way over my head.

In 1972 I played in my first rated chess tournament and joined the USCF for the first time. Back then the USCF was the only source of really specialized chess books, so their catalogue opened up a whole new world for me. One of the first books I got was I. A. Horowitz’s Chess Openings: Theory and Practice. I remember looking over it on the train to Chicago, my second rated tournament, and taking the “fool’s gold” approach of looking for lines with the ± symbol at the bottom. Although the analysis is highly outdated now, I still love the organization of Horowitz’s book, with “Idea Variations” that show you what White and Black are trying to accomplish when the opponent doesn’t make the best moves, followed by “Practical Variations” that show you the main lines as they were in 1970. Then there are illustrative games. (Complete games! Not the fool’s gold of partial lines with a ± or = evaluation.) Finally, at the end of each chapter there were “Supplementary Variations” covering side lines.

To me, this is still the way that opening books ought to be organized. It really is a great way to learn them, as opposed to just memorizing lines.

The other earliest books I bought were mostly a waste of money. I made the mistake of getting the cheapest books written by players whose name I recognized. So, for example, I ordered Reuben Fine’s deservedly long-forgotten book on the Fischer-Petrosian match, The Final Candidates’ Match, Buenos Aires 1971. I imagine this pamphlet (it was nothing more than that, stapled together) was prepared very hastily to capitalize on the Fischer boom, and probably vanished from the catalog shortly after the Fischer-Spassky match.

Another extremely low-budget production was Larry Evans’ Scotch Game, a 28-page monograph from Ken Smith’s Chess Digest series. I can imagine Larry Evans saying, “I need to make a little money, and how hard can it be to write a book about the Scotch Game?” I hadn’t thought about it for years, until I wrote my last blog post! Yesterday I mentioned Garry Kasparov’s revival of the Scotch Game in his world championship match with Anatoly Karpov in 1990. In particular, he revived the 5. Nxc6 variation, which is the only variation that anybody plays for White these days. But in Evans’s book the main line was the classical 5. Nc3 Bb4 etc. It would be a really amusing period piece today! Unfortunately, it is no longer in my possession.

Of my early purchases from the USCF, the only other one that I can say was truly useful in my chess development was Eugene Znosko-Borovsky’s The Art of Chess Combination, which (unlike the other books I have written about) is still in print! It’s one of the few chess books I ever read cover to cover, and it covered all the standard chess combinations — the Greek gift sacrifice on h7, etc. I think that probably every developing chess player needs a book like this at some point, although it doesn’t have to be Znosko-Borovsky. Perhaps the same function is served by problem-oriented chess websites like Chesstempo.

I should also mention Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess, which was the first prize I ever won at a chess tournament (fourth place unrated at the Indiana State Championship in 1972, thank you very much). What a stunning disappointment that book was. One of only two books ever to come out with Bobby Fischer as the (titular) author, in reality it was just a series of mate-in-two type problems. The book could have been written by anybody. You don’t get any insight into Fischer’s chess mind from it.

Fortunately I wised up and at some point I bought the one true Bobby Fischer book, My 60 Memorable Games, and I’m very glad that I did. For many years it was out of print and not easy to obtain. Thanks to the Internet, I don’t think that will ever happen again.

So, what can you learn about me from my first chess books? Number one, that I was a very poor judge of chess books. Number two, I had nobody to guide me. Number three, a LOT of time has gone by since then…

Okay, I’ve had my turn. What were your first chess books, which was your favorite, and why?

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Last night I played in the first round of the June Saturday Knight Live Marathon at Bay Area Chess.  Compared to most tournaments, I would describe this one as… intimate. There were only twelve players on six boards, split into two sections. If you do the math, you realize that this tournament is basically going to be a round robin. (Salman Azhar, the TD, does allow walk-ins, so it’s possible that the players will change to some extent from week to week.)

My game against Arhant Katare was decided right in the opening. I played a side line in the Scotch Opening and it was clear that my young opponent only knew the main line.

Position after 9. b3. Black to move.

FEN: r3kb1r/p1ppqppp/b1p5/3nP3/2P5/1P6/P3QPPP/RNB1KB1R b KQkq – 0 9

This position arises after 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 ed 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nxc6 bc 6. e5 Qe7 7. Qe2 Nd5 8. c4 Ba6 9. b3. Garry Kasparov revived this line against Anatoly Karpov in their fifth world championship match, in 1990. In that game Karpov played 8. … Nb6 and lost in 102 moves. A year later, in Tilburg, Karpov played 8. … Ba6 9. b3 g6 and lost again.

The “book” moves here are Karpov’s 9. … g6, the obvious 9. … O-O-O, and the wild 9. … Qh4, which I don’t really know anything about. A few years ago I was analyzing the position with Fritz, after I had lost a very discouraging game against Michael Aigner, and it suggested 9. … f6. A very reasonable move that has for some reason been almost completely ignored by theory — my favorite kind of move! I’ve been playing it in this position ever since.

Katare continued in normal fashion with 10. Bb2, and now I played 10. … Nf4!, which is the whole point. Though f4 is by far the best square for the knight, this move has been played only 11 times according to ChessBase — and two of the games were mine!

Katare played 11. ef?!, which falls into a little tactical trap. He is in good company. This was the move played in the stem game for 10. … Nf4, a game between Ljubojevic and Ivkov from 1978. (I did not know about the Ljubo game. As far as I knew, the whole thing was Fritz’s idea.)

Position after 11. ef. Black to move.

FEN: r3kb1r/p1ppqppp/b1p5/3nP3/2P5/1P6/P3QPPP/RNB1KB1R b KQkq – 0 9

If Black takes on e2 or f6 it’s a disaster for him, but fortunately I have a series of zwischenzugs: 11. … Nd3+! 12. Kd2 Qxe2+ 13. Bxe2 Nxb2. The knight is trapped on b2, but he’s like a horse that hasn’t been broken yet. In the process of taming him, White is going to have to lose a couple of “fence posts,” the pawns on c4 and f6. In the stem game, Ljubojevic managed to draw anyway, but fortunately my opponent wasn’t a grandmaster and I was able to convert the extra pawn into a win without too much difficulty.

It was an odd way to win a game, because the computer came up with the most important idea, and all I had to do was mop up afterwards. But a win is a win!

Linnea and Thadeus came with me, and their games were much more interesting, especially Thadeus’. Here was the crucial position. It’s important to note that the time was very uneven: Thadeus was down to about three minutes (with no time delay), while his opponent had more than 30 minutes left.

Position after 1. Rf1. Black to move.

FEN:4r2b/p3k3/7P/8/1pB1N3/8/PP4n1/1K3R2 b – - 0 1

Thadeus has just moved his rook on e1 to f1, obviously threatening 2. Rf7+. I thought that 1. … Rf8 was forced, and I was trying to figure out whether White is winning after 2. Rxf8 Kxf8. But Thadeus’ opponent shocked me with 1. … Kd8? Well, okay, this does stop Rf7+, but it seems to just loses material after 2. Nd6!, a move Thadeus played with little hesitation. However, Thadeus’ opponent had a trick up his sleeve: 2. … Ne3.

Position after 2. ... Ne3. White to move.

Here all that Thadeus needs to do is play 3. Re1! and the game is over. If 3. … Nxc4 4. Rxe8+ followed by Rxh8 decides. If Black moves his rook away from the e-file, then the knight falls. And finally, if 3. … Re7 the fork 4. Nf7+ wins. This last line is actually a little bit trickier than it looks at first, because Black gets his piece back after 4. … Ke8 5. Nxh8 Nxc4 6. Rxe7+ Kxe7. (Diagram)

Position after 6. ... Ke7 (analysis). White to move.

FEN: 7N/p3k3/7P/8/1pn5/8/PP6/1K6 w – - 0 6

If it were Black’s move, he would draw with … Kf6. But it’s White’s move, and he gets the last laugh with 7. Ng6+ Kf6 8. h7! winning. Just like my game, it’s all about the tempi!

In fairness to Thadeus, this was a lot to see with only three minutes left on your clock, and so he bailed out into an opposite-color bishop endgame with 3. Nxe8 Nxf1 4. Bxf1 Kxe8. He actually turned down his opponent’s draw offer and played on for a while longer, but after his time got under a minute and he was still not making any progress, he conceded the draw.

On the way back home, Thadeus said, “That’s why I don’t like to  play for attacks.” (Earlier in the game he had a strong kingside attack.) I’m not quite sure what his point was. Did he mean that the time he had used trying to figure out how to checkmate his opponent had gotten him in time trouble?

It’s true that Thadeus has traditionally played more placid chess and has not gotten into time trouble. But still, I think that it was his constant pressure on the opponent that got him a winning position in the first place. The only reason he didn’t win it (aside from the clock, perhaps) was that instead of continuing to put pressure on the opponent with 3. Re1, he played the “bail-out” move 3. Nxe8, which was more in his old style. In other words, he missed the win not because of his new, more aggressive style, but because his old style reasserted itself at the wrong moment.

Meanwhile, Linnea won her game, a rook and pawn endgame which her opponent strangely resigned when he saw he was going to lose a pawn. Memo to all players: When you lose a pawn in a rook-and-pawn endgame, that means the fight has just begun!

So we went home either 83 percent happy or 67 percent happy, depending on whether you count Thadeus as half happy or 100 percent sad.

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I did not go to the concluding day of the Best of the West tournament, because Linnea got a ride with her parents, but I know my readers will want to know what happened. Well, unfortunately she lost her last two games and finished out of the running for prize money. She did (for what it’s worth) gain 50 rating points to move her rating over 1400, but this is not exactly exciting news. Her rating was a bit of an embarrassment before, and now it’s just slightly less so. I really, really believe she should be over 1600 at least.

The story of the day was blunders. In both games she basically blundered a piece — one in a more or less even position, and one in a position where she had stood much better. Looking on the bright side, in five of her six games she was completely winning at some point (according to the computer at least), and in the other one the position was completely equal (again, according to the computer). So she could reasonably have scored 5½ points.

Ah, that beautiful land called Coulda Woulda Shoulda, where all the kids are above average and everybody scores at least 75 percent in chess …

Cailen Melville and Thadeus Frei both had decent but not wonderful tournaments. Cailen went 4-2 and tied for fourth in the 1700-1899 section. Thadeus also went 4-2 and tied for fifth in the 1900-2099 section. I was particularly impressed by his game in round two, which I unfortunately don’t remember well enough to show here. He got a great positional bind but needed energetic, dynamic play to capitalize on it. The old Thadeus might have played insipidly and gotten a draw, but the new Thadeus smashed his opponent’s kingside open by sacrificing two pawns, and snared his opponent’s king in a mating net. It was really, really nice, and hopefully I’ll get the game score from him at some point.

As for the Big Boys, the top section (2100+) was amazingly strong, with three GMs (Khachiyan, DeFirmian and Browne) and twelve masters in all. The two-day section was especially brutal. Out of six players playing round one in the two-day schedule, two were GMs, two were IMs, one was an FM, and one was unrated. So we got pairings like Khachiyan versus De Guzman and De Firmian versus Tate, which we ordinarily wouldn’t see until late in the tournament.

In the end, three people tied for first in the top section: grandmasters Melikset Khachiyan and Nick De Firmian and FM Alfredo De La Cruz, with 4½ points each. Alas, I don’t have any games to show you because I was not there to spectate. All these results are at the Bay Area Chess web page, http://bayareachess.com/events/13/525sp.php.

I have one more piece of non-chess news from the Land of What Is, not the Land of Coulda Woulda Shoulda. Linnea will graduate next month as a valedictorian at Santa Cruz High! To me, this is a hundred times better than the chess tournament that got away. To see her picture in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, go to http://photos.santacruzsentinel.com/2013/05/25/photos-valedictorians-of-santa-cruz-county-2013/#15.

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Yesterday I drove Linnea to the Best of the West tournament in Santa Clara. She is playing in the 1300-1499 section, and she had to play in the two-day (Sunday and Monday) schedule because as you know, we had our own unrated tournament in Aptos on Saturday. So she had to play four games yesterday, and she will play two more today.

The first three rounds went very smoothly, with three wins. This was her most difficult position.

FEN:3r2k1/5p2/p4pp1/1p6/3P4/7P/P4PP1/3R2K1 b – - 0 1

Linnea is Black, and her opponent offered her a draw here or hereabouts. She correctly declined. Black clearly stands better here. She has the potential for an outside passed pawn, which would ordinarily make her better in a king-and-pawn endgame. (But there are some pitfalls! See comments below!) Also,  White has an isolated queen pawn, which makes Black better in a rook-and-pawn endgame. Either way she’s happy.

I do not, however, like the way that she played here. She played 1. … f5?! 2. Kf1 f6?! These errors went unpunished, and in fact her opponent played far worse than she did. He coughed up the d-pawn without a fight and then allowed a trade of rooks, which led to a completely elementary endgame win for Linnea. I don’t remember the exact moves.

It’s tempting to say, “Great! I won!” and not scrutinize the game any further. But in fact the above position is very interesting, and there are things going on here that I did not even suspect.

First, what is wrong with Linnea’s idea? I have two main objections. First, it takes her five tempi instead of four to get her king to d5. In rook endgames, every tempo matters. Also, it loses the tempo for no good reason. I don’t like the accumulation of weak Black pawns on the sixth rank. In a rook endgame, weak pawns are targets, and the more targets you create, the better your opponent’s chances to win or draw. I think her opponent could have taken advantage of this waste of time in a fairly straightforward way with 3. Ke2 Kf7 4. Kd3 Ke6 5. Rc1.

Position after 5. Rc1 (analysis).

FEN:3r4/8/p3kpp1/1p3p2/3P4/3K3P/P4PP1/2R5 b – - 0 5

I think White’s chances for a draw have improved quite a bit. He’ll play h4 and g3 and just keep his king and rook where they are. Any time Black plays … Kd5, he’ll get checked back with Rc5+. Any time Black’s rook leaves the back rank, Rc8 will happen and all of those weak Black pawns will start coming into play.

This position brings up an important point about isolated pawn positions that I have not seen mentioned in books (but maybe I don’t have the right books). The important point is that these games are often decided not by who controls the file the pawn is on, but who controls the adjacent files, which are very often open. Usually you can’t win an IQP position just by loading up on the d-file. Your opponent does the same thing, and it’s a standoff. You win an IQP position by exploiting the c- or e-files. And we can see that here; White has gotten control of the c-file and so it will be hard for Black to make progress. (Here a draw counts as a “win” for White.)

This tells us, then, that Black should grab the c-file at his first opportunity! For that reason 1. … Rd5 would not be a very good move either. I very much like a suggestion of Thadeus Frei: 1. … Kf8 2. Kf1 Rc8!

Position after 2. ... Rc8! (analysis)

FEN: 2r2k2/5p2/p4pp1/1p6/3P4/7P/P4PP1/3R1K2 w – - 0 2

Black seizes the c-file before White can! Notice that White cannot seize the e-file as “compensation,” because 3. Re1 runs into 3. … Rc4! 4. Re4 f5 and now White either has to give up the d-pawn or move his rook to a very bad square. Also, 3. Rd2 does not impress because Black now plays 3. … Ke7 4. Ke2 Kd6 5. Ke3 Kd5 and gets exactly the kind of position he wanted: king blockading the pawn on d5, rook on the open c-file. Now the a- and b-pawns are ready to advance.

The best move for White is 3. Ke2!, and this leads to the unexpected subtleties of the position that I did not realize yesterday.

Position after 3. Ke2 (analysis).

FEN: 2r2k2/5p2/p4pp1/1p6/3P4/7P/P3KPP1/3R4 b – - 0 3

I had figured that Black would answer 3. Ke2 with 3. … Rc2+ 4. Rd2 Rxd2+ 5. Kxd2, trading into a won king-and-pawn endgame. Isn’t that the point of 2. … Rc8?

Well, as it turns out, the endgame after 5. Kxd2 is winning … for White! The reason is that Black is powerless to stop h4, g4, and h5, which create two passed pawns — one on the h-file, one on the d-file. Black cannot stop both of them. Nor can he prevent this plan with 5. … f5, because White very patiently plays h4, g3, f3, g4, h5. The fact that White can create a passer on the kingside in spite of the 3-versus-3 pawn balance is of the utmost importance. It means that Black must keep rooks on the board. And it also means that White can actually seek out a rook trade.

So in the diagrammed position, Black should continue improving her king position with 3. … Ke7. Now notice that if White seeks a rook trade with 4. Kd2 Kd6 5. Rc1 Rxc1 6. Kxc1 it doesn’t work, because the pawn falls after 6. … Kd5. Or if White plays more conventionally with 4. Kd3 Kd6 5. Rd2 Kd5, again White cannot trade rooks with 6. Rc2 Rxc2 7. Kxc2 because the d-pawn falls with 7. … Kxd5. This is a vivid illustration of why every tempo is critical in a rook-and-pawn endgame. If Black’s king had arrived at d5 a tempo later in either one of these lines, White could “threaten” the rook trade, Black would have to abandon the c-file, and then White’s position would be much more defensible, as in diagram 2.

Lessons:

1. In rook and pawn endgames, every tempo matters.
2. In rook and pawn endgames, you should avoid creating pawn weaknesses unnecessarily.
3. In isolated pawn positions, very often control of the adjacent files to the isolani is crucial for both attacker and defender.
4. Always evaluate a transposition to a king-and-pawn endgame with the utmost care. They can backfire on you.

Well, I didn’t expect to write so much about this position! Very quickly let me mention what happened in Linnea’s fourth-round game. She went into the round tied for first at 3-0, and she got a beautiful, nearly mating attack on the kingside. Not only that, her opponent was in time trouble. But her opponent defended ferociously and ingeniously, and the position got messy, and then eventually they got to an endgame where Linnea was a piece up. Easy win, seemingly, but her pieces were passive and there were not many pawns remaining. Eventually, they got to this position:

Position after 1. ... f3!

FEN: 8/8/8/8/3Kp3/5pkP/6P1/5B2 w – - 0 1

And here Linnea was shocked to realize that she has nothing better than a draw, because she has the “wrong color rook pawn.” The game concluded 1. Kxe4 fg 2. Bxg2 and now, of course, Black does not take the bishop becausae 2. … Kxg2?? 3. h4 allows the pawn to queen. Instead he played 2. … Kh4 and there was nothing to do but agree to a draw.

Linnea was very disappointed because she missed a million ways to win, and she felt that it was just her laziness that led to the draw. I’m not sure that I completely agree, although I didn’t see the whole game. I think her opponent deserves a lot of credit for remaining mentally engaged even when it looked hopeless for him, and for envisioning a standard drawing motif that he could at least attempt to reach.

In any event, I think this will be an extremely instructive game for Linnea to study if she can bring herself to do so. Maybe I’ll even show some highlights on my blog, if I can get a chance to see the whole game score.

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This year’s Aptos Library chess tournament for kids was the biggest and most successful ever! I organize and direct this tournament every year in May. Usually we get around 16 to 20 players (last year we had only 14), but this year 37 people participated! It was awesome. We had to use every set that the library owns, plus one of mine and one of Gjon’s.

I wish I knew what our secret was for getting such a huge attendance this year. Better publicity? The library has a new branch manager who seemed really committed to getting the word out. I’d say his efforts paid off. A better date? Usually in the past I have avoided the Memorial Day weekend, but this year it was the only weekend I had available. I thought we might have a low turnout because people would have other plans for the holiday. But apparently their plans were to play chess!

For me personally, the huge crowd meant that I didn’t get a moment’s rest. With twice as many players, everything takes twice as long — working out pairings, keeping track of results, even writing names on the certificates (every player who completes three rounds gets a certificate). All that time adds up. Fortunately Shan Crockett, my regular chess club assistant, was able to take care of things like setting up a table for the food and most of the cleanup. There’s no way I could have done those things. Heck, the only food I got was one cracker. I was busy, busy, busy!

Before I go on to the results, I want to thank the library for its amazing support. I’ve mentioned the publicity. Also, in these budget-challenged times, the library nevertheless paid for enough snacks to feed a small army. When I say “small,” I mean in height, but not in appetite! Those kids devoured the food until there was hardly a crumb left. Finally, the library paid for the medals.

So here were the medal-winners:

Age 9 and Under

1. Kevin Wang
2. Andrew Wang
3. Aaron Chan
3. Kristof Varav
3. Alan Lee
3. Quinn Bourret
3. Darrell Wang

Kevin and Andrew Wang (who, by the way, are not related to each other) tied for first with 3-0 scores, and Kevin won the playoff game. The next five tied for third with 2-1 scores. It would have taken forever to run a five-way playoff, so I chose to leave the ties unbroken. I think that especially for the younger kids there’s no point in breaking the ties, if you have enough medals to go around.

Fortunately we did have enough. We had six bronze medals (five for the younger section, and one for the older section).

Age 10 and Up

1. Linnea Nelson
2. Joshua Mitchener
3. Xarius Joseph

Well, there was absolutely no surprise about who finished first. Linnea hardly had to break a sweat, but this tournament did give her a chance to try out some new openings (the Gruenfeld). I think that she deserved a chance to finish off her high school years with a flourish. She won last year too, but I don’t think she was so completely dominant yet.

Joshua Mitchener tied with Linnea at 3-0 and then lost to her in the playoff. I was thrilled and amazed by Xarius, who finished alone in third at 2½-½. Okay, he had a little bit of luck because he never had to play against Linnea (thanks in part to a second-round draw). But I was impressed that he won two games with ease, and he was completely winning the drawn game as well but he allowed a stalemate. (Obviously we still need to work on that…) Xarius went through a phase of a few months where he lost interest in chess, but now he seems to be back and better than ever!

In the older section there was a six-way tie for fourth at 2-1. I feel a little bad that none of these kids won a prize. Particularly Ben Walker-Edwards got a little bit of a raw deal because he had a 2-0 score going into the last round but had to play Linnea, a game he had absolutely no chance of winning. That probably kept him from winning a prize.

The certificates turned out to be a really good idea this year. Sometimes, in years past, I’ve felt the kids perceived them as a little bit of a booby prize — like, you didn’t win a medal so here’s a crummy certificate instead. But this year the kids were asking for them.

I think it sends an important message when everybody gets to play three games and everybody who perseveres and plays all three, even if they lose all of them, gets rewarded for it. I can tell you that there was one kid who was getting ready to burst into tears after he lost his last round game, and then I handed him his certificate and suddenly the tears went away!

My only regret about having such a huge number of players is that I didn’t get as much chance to interact with the kids personally as I would have liked. But at least the certificate-for-tears trade, which in chess terms I would call “winning the exchange,” was one moment that I will remember for a long time.

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… and the reason I love it is that speed chess is ridiculously entertaining.

… and the reason I hate it is that speed chess magnifies all of my worst tendencies.

Both of these reason were on full display in a mind-boggling speed game that I played with Linnea yesterday after the Aptos Library chess club was over. Here is the position where the mind-bogglingness started. I’m playing Black, Linnea is White, and it’s my move.

Position after 1. g3. Black to move.

FEN: r2q4/2p3k1/pb4r1/1p1pP1pp/3P1pnp/2PQ1NP1/PP3P1N/5RRK b – - 0 1

Up to this point I’ve been having a merry old time pushing all of my kingside pawns, but after Linnea’s move 1. g3 I started to get a whiff of trouble in paradise. On any pawn capture, the lines start opening up in an uncomfortable way around my king. And the knight on g4 is just in the way, making it hard for me to avoid the pawn captures. Is there anything I can do about this?

Here I found what Rybka says is Black’s one and only correct move: 1. … Nxf2+! According to the computer, Black is now +1.9 pawns, and on any other move I would have been 0.0 or worse. So, huge props to me, right?

Well, not so much. The problem is that after finding the only way out of trouble (temporarily), I didn’t think very hard about what got me into trouble in the first place. I played the next couple of moves on auto-pilot. Linnea played 2. Rxf2 g3 3. R2g2! and now we got to the most crucial position.

Position after 3. R2g2. Black to p lay and lose.

FEN:r2q4/2p3k1/pb4r1/1p1pP1pp/3P1p2/2PQ1Np1/PP4RN/6RK b – - 0 3

John Emms’ The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book has a great chapter called “Find the Wrong Move!” This chapter is full of positions where somebody plays a move that seems completely natural and plausible, and yet is practically the worst move on the board. The above position would be a perfect one for that chapter. Find the wrong move!

We were playing speed chess, remember. So I gave this position about 5 seconds thought, if that much, and played 3. … gh?? The “automatic recapture.” The only reason I even thought that long is that I had to check and make sure I wasn’t getting mated after 4. Rxg5. (I’m not getting mated because I play 4. … hgQ+, queening with check and removing the guard all at the same time.)

What I missed is that Linnea can simply recapture on h2: 4. Rxh2! At this point my reaction went through the five stages of grief.

Denial: Okay, she’s threatening to take on h5 and she’s threatening to take on g5 and she’s threatening Nh4 (the real killer), but surely I can do something about those things, right?

Anger: This is ridiculous, how could I be losing this game? I’ve been winning for like 20 moves, and now all of a sudden there’s nothing I can do?

Bargaining: Okay, how about if I give back a little bit of material. Say, … Qd7 or … Qh8?

Depression: I have got to be the worst speed chess player in history. How can I pretend to be a “teacher” when I do things like this?

Acceptance: Oh well, it’s only speed chess. I played 4. … Kh6 5. Nh4 Rg8 6. Nf5+ and resigned.

The computer, of course, doesn’t go through the five stages of grief. Rybka simply says that after 4. Rxh2 White stands at +1.8 pawns. That’s right, one “automatic recapture” transformed the position from 1.9 pawns in Black’s favor to 1.8 pawns in White’s favor. Rarely have I ever seen a position where the seemingly obvious move was so radically, outrageously wrong.

As I drove home in my car, it hit me that of course, there was no need for me to take the knight. It’s not going anywhere. I could have played 4. … g4, which puts another knight under attack and, more importantly, clears a path to h4 for the queen. It’s critically important for Black to keep the four pawns on the board until he can bring up reinforcements. In particular, the g3 pawn is a monster that paralyzes White’s whole army. This pawn is worth more than a knight.

The tactical details after 4. … g4 are quite complicated and I could give my analysis here, but I think that would kind of miss the point.

In order to learn from this game, we need to ask not, “What can Black do better after this point?” but “What did Black do badly before this point?” Look at those queenside pieces. The queen has never moved. The queen rook has never moved. The dark-squared bishop might as well be a pawn, for all the effect it’s having on the game. Black is trying to attack with three of his pieces as bystanders. This is not a good idea.

Lesson 1: Invite all of your pieces to the party. Don’t launch an all-out attack until you have completed your development. The price of this failure became apparent after 4. Rxh2. I’d like to move my rook to h8 or my bishop to d8, but those all take two or three moves and I don’t have that much time. The time to improve those pieces was earlier.

In fact, the same thing is true for the position after the supposedly good move 3. … g4. It’s actually quite debatable whether this is Black’s “best move,” as Rybka says, because it doesn’t actually solve the problem of the bystanders on the queenside. The position remains quite perilous, where one misstep for Black can easily turn his won position into a lost cause. For this reason, I think that the best move is actually Rybka’s second choice, 3. … Qe7 (which it rates at +1.7 for Black). Black’s plan is simply to prevent any breakthroughs with e5-e6, develop his queenside pieces, and only then start to march the kingside pawns again. If White wants to move her knight away from h2, let her do it. Once Black’s pawns have pieces behind them, White will not be able to stop them without sacrificing some material.

This is the practical, sound way to play the position. It carries very little risk of disaster. It’s Mike Splane chess. Even though he’s very good at tactics (see my last post!) he is always in favor of having the tactics flow from a sound strategy. I can almost hear him saying, “To win a won position, first eliminate all of your opponent’s chances of counterplay.”

As I said at the outset, speed chess magnifies all of my bad tendencies. Here’s what I did wrong in the game: I launched a pawn storm prematurely. I didn’t develop all of my pieces. I had “tunnel vision,” focusing only on the kingside and forgetting the rest of the board. I played an “automatic recapture,” without even thinking about my opponent’s response or other options for me. (In fact this is important enough for me to make it another lesson:

Lesson 2: There are no automatic recaptures.)

Immediately after the game I was stunned by the fact that my position had gone from won to lost in the blink of an eye. But once you look at the position from the perspective of the whole game, you realize that I had sown the seeds of my defeat much earlier. They were all there, waiting to bloom like a huge carrion flower.

So speed chess is frustrating. But it’s also ridiculously entertaining, I’ve got to admit.

By the way, I’ve scarcely written one word about Linnea, and that’s unfair. She made mistakes, obviously, but on the whole she played more practically than I did and deserved to win. Notice how in the initial position she has invited all of her pieces to the party, even if the knights are looking somewhat forlorn. (That was her biggest problem in this game, figuring out what to do with the knights.)

Linnea will be playing in the “Best of the West” open this weekend in Santa Clara, a big tournament with a whopping $1500 prize for first in the 1300-1499 section. I am super-optimistic about her chances. I mean, she’s beating masters in speed chess. (Not just me, a poor speed chess player. She also beat Gjon, an excellent speed chess player, in one game this weekend.) The challenge for her is the opposite of mine; she hasn’t yet learned how to use the extra time in a tournament game effectively. But she will!

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Last weekend Mike Splane showed me a sensational game that he recently played at the Kolty Chess Club. It features a position where his opponent could have played a queen sacrifice, to which the best defense would have been a counter-queen sacrifice! The only slight blemish on the game is that Mike did not see his opponent’s threat. He was just lucky (sort of) that his own threat was faster. “Sometimes being a doofus is good!” he joked.

Let me back up to a move before the critical position. Black has just played 1. … Rc4, and it is now Mike’s move. (Unfortunately I don’t remember what his opponent’s name was.)

Position after 1. ... Rc4. White to move.

FEN: 5rk1/R3Rp2/4p1p1/1q1pP2p/2rB1Pn1/1pP3P1/1P5P/3Q2K1 w – - 0 2

It looks to me as if White can win a pawn in complete safety with 2. Reb7 Qc6 3. Rxb3. However, Mike thought he saw something better. And in fact he was right–it was better, only there was a little extra wrinkle that he hadn’t counted on.

The move he played was 2. Qd3!, which makes a drastic threat: 3. Qxg6+! forcing checkmate or winning a ton of material. What he hadn’t realized was that Black very nearly has a spectacular answer of his own.

Position after 2. Qd3. Black to move.

FEN: 5rk1/R3Rp2/4p1p1/1q1pP2p/2rB1Pn1/1pPQ2P1/1P5P/6K1 b – - 0 2

I’m not quite sure how to caption this position. Black to play and almost draw? Black to play and scare the bejeezus out of his opponent? Anyway, can you see what Black’s idea was?

The answer is that Black can almost play 2. … Rxd4!?, simultaneously offering a queen sacrifice and an exchange sac. White is ill-advised to accept either. If 3. Qxd4 then 3. … Qe2 is winning for Black — not only because of the danger of … Qxh2+ but also because the b2 pawn is hanging. And if 3. Qxb6 Black has a remarkable drawing variation: 3. … Rd1+ 4. Kg2 Rd2+ 5. Kf1 (if the king goes to either f3 or h3 he gets mated!) 5. … Nxh2+ with a perpetual check. This is a great position to know, and in fact I mentioned it in my recent post Questioning Assumptions: rook and knight against a king on the edge of the board can often draw all by themselves.

As it turns out, White actually does have a way to thwart this combination. After taking the queen with 3. Qxb5 Rd1+ he can give it right back with 4. Qf1! Then Black’s best move is 4. … Ne3!, leading more or less by force to the following line: 5. Qxd1 Nxd1 6. Rab7 Nxb2 7. Rxb3 Nc4. (Diagram)

Position after 7. ... Nc4. White to move.

FEN:5rk1/4Rp2/4p1p1/3pP2p/2n2P2/1RP3P1/7P/6K1 w – - 0 8

This is actually a pretty interesting endgame position in its own right. Mike thought that Black might actually have a “fortress,” but I don’t think so. To create a fortress, Black really needs his knight to be on e4, but if he goes there the knight will be subject to undermining with c3-c4. Still, it will be a long and agonizing struggle for White to win this game.

But anyway, this is all moot, because in diagram 2, after 2. … Rxd4!? White would play 3. Qxg6+!! and win. That’s what I started this post with–defending against a queen sacrifice by a counter-queen sacrifice. Note also that if Black declines with 3. … Kh8 White continues 4. Qxh5+ Kg7 5. Qxg4+, getting rid of the knight, after which he can take on d4 without any fear of getting checkmated.

Black saw this, and instead of the failed brilliancy of 2. … Rxd4, he played 2. … Kg7 to defend his g-pawn. But now his kingside collapses around him. 3. Rxe6! takes advantage of the pin on f7 and threatens Qxg6+, so Black still doesn’t have a chance to play his queen sac. Black defended with 3. … Kh6 and now Mike offered a rook sacrifice with 4. Rxf7! Once again this forestalls Black’s dreams of sacrificing his queen, because mate is threatened on g6. Black continued playing forced defensive moves: 4. … Rg8 5. Ree7 Rh8 6. e6! (diagram)

Position after 6. e6. Black to move.

FEN:7r/4RR2/4P1pk/1q1p3p/2rB1Pn1/1pPQ2P1/1P5P/6K1 b – - 0 6

With threats like Bg7+ and Bxh8 in the air, it’s all over. I’m not sure whether Mike’s opponent played on a couple more moves or resigned here, but in any event the result was 1-0.

A pretty cool finish! I have one remaining challenge for the reader: Can any of you find an actual tournament game where one side plays a queen sacrifice, and the only way for the other player to avoid defeat is to play an immediate counter-queen sacrifice that wins? I’m sure that it must have been done, but I can’t think of one off the top of my head. This position is not quite an example because Mike’s queen sac idea 3. Qxg6+ avoids a draw, not a defeat; and maybe he could have won anyway with the 5. Qf1 idea that led to diagram 3.

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