The 6 Elements of Chess Pt5
The 6 Elements of Chess Part 5
By N.M. Steve Colding
Exploiting a Space Advantage: Part 3
So first I would like to thank all my readers for reasding these articles. It warms the cockles of my heart ( exactly what is a cockle?). Also I would like to award the cldng no-prize to ( you lucky people) cbooker from across the pond. Congrats cbooker may all your moves be monsters!. Honorable mention also goes to Jkor and SashaMaksimcev who both had the correct answer but they were 2nd and third repectively.
Now back to work! The correct answer was Qd3. This move exploits the weakness left by Black's Pawn push h6. The square g6 became a square to invade on because of the pin of the f7 Pawn by the Bishop. Giving us the following position:
Black decided to take the Bishop and White took the Knight. Since White was attacking the g-pawn twice he brought his Knight back to h7 to h7 to protect the Pawn. Now it is again without a doubt that White has a big edge. He has invaded Black's position and Black is holding on. White has achieved this fine position through very simple means.
Rule. No matter how big our position is it does not excuse us from coming up with good moves! The move that White now does is very creative and causes Black to fold right away. In any case we should not take away from White's move because it still would have maintained the advantage.
The move Nd5! blocked the a2-g8 diagonal. Black took the Queen and White mated him in 2 moves which I shall leave to you to figure out. First one with the correct answer gets a mating no-prize! P.S. don't look at the complete game below!
So let's review what to do when exploiting a space advantage:
1) Control the center square
2) Split the opponents in half
3) Attack the weakness
4) Play good creative moves.
To be complete there are other ways to exploit a space advantage but those are for future articles. Below is the complete game which we used.
Next Time : Time in Chess
