Seeing Patterns

Tal's Winning Chess Combinations (1979) has influenced my perception. Last week, I read the first chapter of this book by Mikhail Tal and Victor Khenkin, which exists under several titles with and without Tal's authorship. This chapter concerns the rook and corridor checkmates and checkmate threats. These corridor vulnerabilities are most often back-rank weaknesses, but there are other corridors, including a position where a rook must be given up to avoid checkmate between two walls of pawns alongside the f-file.

The large number of deflection combinations to threaten checkmate has made me more alert to these possibilities when going through other games. Of course, these ideas are not new to me. I was familiar with the idea even before Lev Alburt's Chess Training Pocket Book (1997), which I read fifteen years ago, stimulated my imagination for the maneuvers with this exercise.

White to move

Alburt gives the exercise the title, "Defection Detection". It is number 93 in the book.

This morning, I was reading Baskaran Adhiban's annotations to his draw against Wesley So at the Tata Steel Chess Tournament in January when the deflection motif jumped into my perception. After 25.Bxa7, So could have played 25...Rxa7. He did not, playing 25...Bxc3 instead.

What if he had grabbed the bishop?

White to move

Immediately, I saw 26.Qd5+ Kh8 27.Qxe5. However, nothing compels the suicidal 27...Rxe5. So would have had choices: 27...Raa8, 27...Qb6+, and others. In Adhiban's case, his offer of a bishop wins So's bishop, but no more. The game, as he points out, was, "[a]n exciting draw with lots of interesting twists!" (Chess Informant 131, 49).

Missed Chance

Baskaran Adhiban won the challengers group in the 2016 Tata Steel Chess Tournament, earning a position in the top section this year. He stood one place above last after four rounds, having lost two games and drawn two. The commentators were beginning to discuss how the winner of the challengers group often gets clobbered when they move up to the top group.

In round five, Adhiban put an end to this conversation. He beat Sergey Karjakin! He did not lose another game through the rest of the tournament and finished tied for third place with Wei Yi and Levon Aronian.

He might have finished even stronger. In round eleven, he reached this position against Magnus Carlsen, who finished the tournament in second place.

Black to move

The game ended in a draw. Can you find the combination that Adhiban missed?

Hat tip to Daniel King's PowerPlayChess video on this game.

Lessons with Yasser

Yasser Seirawan is giving me free chess lessons, but they are not exclusive. Once again, he is the host in the broadcast booth for the Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee. I have been enjoying Seirawan's commentary during Grand Master tournaments since the early '00s. Many event were broadcast on the Playchess server before the introduction of broadcast technologies that offer live video of the playing room combined with the analysis board.

This morning (it is afternoon in the Netherlands), while drinking my morning coffee, Seirawan spent a few minutes on a position that arose in Wei -- Nepomniachtchi. He said that he would need several hours looking at the position, followed by analysis with a strong computer in order to understand what is going on.


Wei, Yi -- Nepomniachtchi, Ian B96
Tata Steel Masters, Wijk aan Zee 2017

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 h6 8.Bh4 Qb6 9.a3 Nbd7 10.Be2 e5 11.Nf5 g6 12.Bf2 Nc5 13.b4 gxf5

White to move

White obviously must capture the knight on c5, but as it is pinned, the capture can be deferred a few moves. What should White do in the meantime.

Seirawan showed a few quick variations, some very bad for White.

His advice:

Spend time with this position analyzing without a computer. Only check your analysis with the computer after a lot of time exploring the position without assistance,

Several moves were played while I created this post. The game is going on. It behooves the serious chess student to black out the game in progress and study this position. There are many other games in progress. Can I ignore this one?