Tuesday, 7 October 2025

Breaking down the walls ...

I have attempted to solve many tactical puzzles over the years, where you are encouraged to look for ways to 'break through' the castled King's defenses through the city walls ... When you have at least two pieces aimed at the pawns around the castled enemy King, it is always worth trying to imagine what you could do once those pawns have been eliminated.  Ask yourself - what possible tactics can I try, after I've effectively broken in ... Here is the critical position that was reached during my game this evening. 



As you can see, there is a possibility of winning the g and f pawns for the Bishop, but how do you follow this up?  The key is to have a look at the remaining Black pieces to see what can potentially be exploited.  In this case, I could see that the Queen and the Bishop are lined up along the 7th rank, so effectively I get to skewer the Queen and the Bishop, meaning I win the Bishop back once the Queen moves .. !!  So the net result is two pawns profit ...   

Here is the beginning of this little combination ... it was considered a brilliancy by chess.com's analysis.  







Unfortunately after
22. Bxg6 fxg6
23. Rxg6+ Kh8
24. Rg7 

my opponent tried to counter with 24. ..Nd5? threatening my Queen, but this made the eval bar max out in my favour, because I can then counter again with Queen 25. Qe5!!  My opponent then resigned ... Here is the full game ... 

Caro-Kan

No comments: