At beginners level, most chess games are won because one the two players obtains a material advantage. Indeed, a must for every chess players is to solve tactical exercises to sharp calculation and to learn winning patterns. Today, I am gong to present one of my favourite theme: deflection.
When you work a tactical exercise, the first thing you should always do is to focus on the opponent's king. Is he weak along a file, a diagonal, a rank, squares of a certain colour? Is he smothered by his own pieces? Could he and any other piece be forked? If not, you should check if there are hanging pieces and ways to win material. Of course, if you don't have knights, it is pointless to look for forks, as if you don't have rooks or the queen, you should not look for checkmates along the 1st (or 8th) rank. Think about your forces.
In the position below, Black moves and win. Try to work on it yourself, but don't calculate for more than 5 minutes. If you know the pattern, it is just a matter of seconds, if you don't know it, you may spend hours on the position without finding the move.
White's king is seriously endangered, as his own pawns would not allow him to escape a check on the 1st rank. We all have been mated along the 1st (8th) rank at one point of his chess career and we learned the hard way this simple and powerful tactical pattern. Therefore, it makes sense to investigate what happens after 1...Rc1+. White can defend from the check with 2.Rd1, after which 2...Rxd1 3.Qxd1 leads to an advantage for White (he is up the exchange for no compensation).
However, if we could find a way to deflect either the rook from the d-file, or the queen from the b3 square (from which it defended the rook d1 in our imaginary variation), we would be able to checkmate. Is there any such move?
Indeed, after verbalising the problem, we notice that the amazing 1...Qb4! does exactly this. If 2.Rxb4, 3.Rc1+ Qd1, 4.Rxd1# checkmate. If 2.Qxb4, 3.Rc1+ Rd1 4.Rxd1# checkmate. This is what we wanted, but we should not stop our analyses to these two lines, as White is not forced to capture (this is not checkers!).
The spectacularity of 1...Qb4 is that the move is also a double attack, as Black is now threatening to win material. White can seemingly defend the first rank, the queen, and the rook with only one move 2.Qd1. Can you see the win here?
2...Qxd4! winning the rook (this is not checkmate, but enough to win the position and consider the exercise solved). In fact, White cannot capture back because if 3.Qxd4 Rd1+ 4.Qd1 Rxd1# checkmate. Isn't it pretty? :)
The wonderful thing of tactical exercises is that they teach you beautiful ideas. Once you have learned them, they will remain in the back of your mind and, hopefully, they will be evoked during a game when you smell something interesting. Like in the position below, where we should immediately notice a potential checkmate along the 8th rank.
In the position below, White moves and win.
How many seconds did you need to solve the exercise this time?
May your subconscious assimilate all tactical patterns!
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