— More tactics to come —
These are some amazing tactics that I missed in my games.
The tactics below are powered by Listudy.org, which is a tool to help people share puzzles/tactics on blogs.
1. Greed or Not to Greed
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This is a question of if you can take the pawn with your Queen or not. And if you can, then what’s the follow-up? Turns out that due to the back rank issues and the fact that you can remove either defending rooks, there’s an awesome tactical blow by taking his knight!
Not a very good game by me, but I tried to flag him at the end and succeeded.
2. Sometimes the best move seems counter-intuitive
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You can ruin black’s position here with the not so obvious move Bxb6!! Who would ever do this move, opening up his rook’s file opposite to your King?! The point is after you play a3 to consolidate your kingside, black’s weak square on c7 can only be defended by his King. So Nb5 ruins his day and makes his King stuck in the center where your Queen X-rays and forfeits castling rights.
Of course, I missed this in the game and went 9. Nd5, which is probably what most humans would play 🙂
3. The Dilemma
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You can win a tempo on his queen and have a monster knight with the move Ne5!! If he takes, he will walk into a lot of trouble with his both his dark squares and the f-file opening which you can line up the queen-rook battery on. This is the line to show what kind of trouble he will get into if he takes your knight, and if he doesn’t he will lose a tempo with the queen and your knight is just massive.
Answer: Ne5 Bxe5 fxe5 b4 Nb1 d5 Qf3 Rf8 Nd2 Bb7 Bh6 O-O-O Bxf8 Rxf8 Qf6
4. S & M
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Because his pieces are all tied up, we have the amazing R7e4!! here. If he tries to hang on to his knight with g5, then his rook is also out of squares and after Ne1 he will be down a piece.
Answer: R7e4 Bxe4 Rxe4 g5 Ne1 Rxf2 Bxf2
5. How Typical
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This is a typical rook sacrifice that I missed because the follow-up with the Queen checks was too strong here, leading to mate in 3. Always be on the lookout of what happens when we eliminate one of his pawns, defending the other crucial pawn that can be taken with check.
Answer: Rxg7 Rxg7 Qxh6+ Rh7 Qf6+ Rg7 Qxg7#
6. Exploiting the issue
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He has a backrank issue here, so we can just take the free pawn on c3 leading to massive activity.
Answer: Qxc3 Rxd3 Qxd3
7. A flashy move
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We have a flashy bishop sacrifice that leads to mate if he takes with the king. And if he doesn’t it’s crushing anyway because we removed his important pawn and mate will soon follow with the coordination of the bishops & queen.
Answer: Bxg7 Kxg7 Qxg5+ Kh8 Qxh6+ Kg8 Qh7#
