2024/06/29 DPA: "The Power Of A Dual-Purpose Move"

White to move.

Black's Queen is en prise but so is White's:  if 1. Nxd8, then 1. ... Nxd5.

Notice that Black's d pawn is pinned since the Queen is unguarded.  So, as long as White stays on the d file and Black doesn't move to protect the Queen, White's Knight cannot be captured.

1. Bh6+ Kxh6  2. Qd2+ Kg7  3. Nxd8

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The key was not panicking and releasing the tension prematurely with 1. Nxd8 [ie "If I see a hanging Queen, I'm going to take it."] but to recognize that the attraction sac on h6 allowed White to make the dual-purpose 2. Qd2+ move which checked the King AND removed it from the Black Knight's attack.

The only way Black could have saved himself was if he could block check with his Queen, which would have been dual-purpose also.

I notice high-level players frequently make dual-purpose moves whereas I rarely can see them.

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Bh6+ was the first move I saw but I hadn't yet completed my board survey so I didn't yet appreciate what this accomplished.

Also, I wrote about the pin which turned out to be irrelevant since it was the attack on the Queen that mattered.  But it led me to thinking about moving the Queen away from the Black Knight but still along the d file to maintain the d pawn pin [edit:  @BryanCFB pointed out that 1. ... bxc6 nullifies the d pawn pin], initially to d4 to pin the Knight but then to d2 and then Qh6+, which didn't lead anywhere but then I changed the move order and found the solution.

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This might be problematic for sufferers of RBBS [Remote Bishop Blindness Syndrome] who concentrated solely on the Q+N combo and ignored other pieces.