The Back Rank

Miscellaneous

So this is the weekend I'm missing the World Open. It's a great tournament and if you ever get a chance to play, I encourage you to play. The experience there is not like any other tournament I've played in. On the other hand, it's outrageously expensive and the competition is very tough. But if you're well under-rated, breaking even is not an unreasonable expectation.

Here are a couple of tactics from recent games I've played. First a warm-up:

My opponent just played Qd7, sacking the knight on f3. If Kxf3, black wins with Qh3+ Ke4 c5, boxing in the king. But white has a winning tactic instead of Kxf3.

Black to play

Here I missed a pretty mating idea. I sacked a knight a couple moves earlier to get into the king position. I certainly have enough pieces converging, with queen, rook, and bishop all pointed squarely at weak points. I played the winning b3 where Kd2 can be met by Rxc2+ and Qxb2 where black now has 4 pawns for the piece, white's king is still exposed, and the b-pawn is close to promotion.

I think if black realizes that white's only hope is to play Kd2 and escape to the kingside, the mating net is not so tough to find. Black has Bc3! and is now threatening mate. If bxc3 bxc3, mate is still threatened. White can only delay by Qb4 Qa1+ Qb1 Qa3+ Qb2 Qxb2

CT-Art update:
Level 80: 64 % (32 done, 12 to go)
Ct-Art elo: 2510

Labels: diagrams, progress report, tactics

posted by Loomis @ 5:48 PM 1 comments