How To Solve A Chess Puzzle?
Hello! This is H1 and we’re going to be running it back with another episode talking about chess knowledge, chess wisdom, and chess understanding again. Today, in this position we are the black pieces, what do you think is the best move?
First of all, to analyze this position, we have to think about our opponent's threat or if they even have any. We're going to go from the most powerful piece to the least. First of all, their queen is attacking our pawn on g6, but that isn’t a major threat since our f7 pawn is protecting our pawn on g6. Their rooks in the position aren't on the best squares and since their King isn't castled and their rooks are inactive, that's the reason why they’re losing. Furthermore, you have to notice their bishop is still in the back rank, on the f1 square and the only pieces that are active on their side are their queen on g4 and their knights on e4 and c3. Their knight on e4 is threatening to check on f6 and d6 currently, which could be troublesome in our case. They do have a pawn that is advanced in the position. This pawn on e5 is targeting our weak squares on d6 and f6.
In this position, time is of the essence and if we don't fight back now, then we will surely be losing. Usually, with these puzzles, we have to think about our forcing moves. What are our forcing moves in this position? Well, with white we are going to look at our most powerful piece first to keep everything in order and systematic with our mind. Our queen doesn't have any captures but it does have one juicy check on b6. That queen is checking the king along the a7 to g1 diagonal. We do have one other forcing move which is rook takes on h2 and knight h6 which would be attacking their queen on g4, but there isn't an exact follow-up with either of those forcing moves. One of them is just losing a rook. But let's analyze what happens after the Queen b6 check.
After 1.Qb6+ their only good move would be 2.Nf2 because if they do 2.Nc5, Qxc5, 3.Qd4, Qxd4+ that would be checkmate on the board. But what happens if they defend with knight to f2? The Queen shouldn't capture the knight on f2, which would check them, but we would be giving away a queen for the knight. So, we would have to consider taking that pawn on the b2 square. After 2.Qxb2, we are forking two pieces at once. The knight on c3 and the rook on a1 are being attacked. It is impossible to defend both of the pieces and they will have to lose one. After their final move 3.Rb1, we would capture the knight on c3 (3.Qxc3). They could still attack our queen with moves like rook to b3, but as long as we have safe squares to escape with our Queen, we should win this game easily with an extra knight.
This game is weird because we need to develop our pieces quickly, but as long as the player is keeping the opponent’s threats in mind, any player should be fine. If you have a friend who plays chess, what I used to do when I was younger was spar against players in my chess club in positions like these. If I won, then great, if the opponent can draw or win, even better, because being resilient in chess is important too. This is a good lesson to acknowledge how important one check is.
Keep on fighting til the end, staying focused in chess, and real life too! PEACE
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www.youtube.com/@ChessKnowledgewithH1
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