I have recently been playing some pre-season warm-up games. I came across a nice little tactical situation in one of my games yesterday whereby I can sacrifice both my rooks and achieve a checkmate with my Queen ... This is a common tactical motif when studying the concept of 'breaking down the enemy walls and stripping the King if its defenses'. I seem to remember attempting a similar exercise on C.T.Art3, which incidentally is an excellent bit of software if you want to practice tactics.
For those not yet acquainted, tactical breakthroughs are all about giving up material in the short-term (only temporarily) and making a profit after the final exchange (or even better, winning the game with checkmate)!
I have managed to beat Level 8 out of 10 on the free Chess App on my Android phone(second attempt)! I'm not really sure how strong it is but, like a greedy kid in a sweet shop it went for whatever treats it could get it's hands on as quickly as possible and munched on them while I was busy concocting a tactical device to blow it away! Who says that you can't learn tactics from books? :) Most of my tactical ideas have come through a dedicated study routine, and this game proved that the tactical motifs can be learnt by familiarisation and the process of reading through them. I'm the first to admit that I'm NOT the most gifted chess tactician - far from it - but tactics can be learnt - hence this Blog!
You can easily see from the game that with a Queen on f7 (Move 26) White can't really finish off Black with a brute force combination ... but remember Philidor's Legacy and it is all quite easy to spot. There should be a Knight on h6 with the Queen giving herself up on g8 - Therefore to make this happen I need to retreat the Queen to b3 (Black gobbles up another Rook at this point) to allow Nf7+ Kg8, Nxh6+ Kh8, Qg8+ Nxg8 (Knight must capture because King cannot of course) Nf7# - instead of a smothered mate I have a neat little Knight and Bishop mate - easy when you know what to look for ... Of course this combination had to be forcing otherwise it would have been mate against me on the next move. Here is the game ...
"Chess is a form of intellectual productiveness; therein lies its peculiar charm, and intellectual productiveness is one of the greatest joys of human existence".
Dr Siegbert Tarrasch (1862-1934), The Game of Chess, 1936, translated by G.E. SMITH and T.G. BONE.
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