14 February 2012

Lesson of the Week

Removing the Guard is an important tactic. Attack the piece that defends another one that you would like to attack, and often you can win one of the two. This position is number 475 in Fred Reinfeld, 1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations. This book is readily available for about $10 at many bookstores, but in order to read the solutions, you need to understand descriptive notation. Reinfeld explains descriptive notation in the front of the book. Many chess masters started with this book as their first text for tactics training. Computers dominate most players' training regimen today, but even Reinfeld's book has not outlived its usefulness. See "Where the Rubber Meets the Road" for a suggestion of how this book is useful in computer training.

White to move

2 comments:

  1. ok i've looked at this for a while. The two obvious removals of guard seem to be busts for white. One would be Bxf4, exf4, and then e5 to fork queen and bishop... but then black has an easy answer with

    Qxf5, exd6, cxd6 and white's a pawn down, and if anything removed his own guard, and did the favor of undoubling black's c file pawns...


    so unless i'm missing something (and i'm deliberately not using an engine or even a board since these are the things you need to see ahead of time) this is a bust.

    The 2nd guard removal of course looks more promising.

    dxe5, Bxe5, and then Bxf4 looks to gain a pawn at first, but instead of exchanging the bishops, black can take on b2, forcing the rookto the b-file, and then retreat the bishop BACK to e5, exchange off bishops and black is even on material, and white cant take the b6 pawn because black has it covered on b7.

    White probably has the better position but black is pretty comfortable too.

    since i'm a patzer, clearly, there must be something i'm missing.

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  2. After 1.dxe5 Bxe5 2.Bxf4 Bxb2 3.Rb1 White has a knight for the pawn and is attacking the unprotected c7 pawn. However, 1...Qxe5 is a better defensive move as the knight still has two defenders.

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