Spectacular attacking chess

Submitted by IM IMCheap on Fri, 05/29/2009 at 8:23am.

Let me present to you one of my favorite games played by WGM Natalia Pogonina against FM Dmitry Biryukov.

Natalia (currently #14 female player in the world rated 2501 FIDE) delivered an unexpected attack on the kingside followed by a few remarkable sacrifices and ended the game in her favor in just 22 moves! A must-see for tactics and attacking chess lovers.

Hint: there are lots of interesting variations, so don't forget to press "Move List" to see them all!

Annotations are courtesy of WGM Natalia Pogonina, http://pogonina.com - check out her website for more cool chess stuff!

» posted in Tactics

| 1607 reads | 14 comments |

5 votes:

Comments:

by b4ndit - 6 months ago
Herning Denmark

Member Since: Feb 2009
Member Points: 15

beautiful !!! The sacrifice of the knight is phenomenal !!! daring chess with an attitude, nice !!!

by IM IMCheap - 6 months ago
Novosibirsk Russia

Member Since: May 2009
Member Points: 177

thedoorman - thanks for the question. f5 seems to be a good move and has some reasoning behind it, but it's too slow. The idea is to open the f-file asap and exploit the weakness of h7 (e.g. by sacking the rook on f6).

In fact, the move f5 is weak since Black can just ignore the threat: if you play fg then Black also plays fg and the rook on f8 comes into play protecting the knight. So f5 gives White a very minor edge, while fe leads to a forced mate in 7 moves.

by guitarzan - 6 months ago
upstate NY United States

Member Since: Dec 2008
Member Points: 183

Thanks for this article! I'm just a blundering 1500 player, but I think I learned something here. Natalia seems to make a target of h6, aligning her bishop and queen on the c1-h6 diagonal as soon as she sees Black fianchetto kingside. It makes for some powerful play on that diagonal, especially when Black desires to castle kingside, too. I just won a game against my computer using what I learned! This is fun!

by madpawn - 6 months ago
London England

Member Since: Mar 2008
Member Points: 712

The attack was fantastic! Gives me some ideas for my own game.

by G-aetan_o - 6 months ago
Italy

Member Since: Jun 2008
Member Points: 13

6..a6?! to play 6..Qc7! 7)Nf3 Nd7 8)0-0 Cgf6 9)Bh6 0-0 10)Bxg7 Kxg7 11)a3 a6 12)Nfe1 e5 13)Nad1 (if 13)dxe5 Nxe5! 14)Nh4 Nd8 15)h3 Nb8 16)f4 Nc4=) Bb7 14)h3 Nad8 15)dxe5 dxe5 16)Nh4 h6 =