[Puzzle Road] A checkmate in remembrance of Bobby Fischer! (P6)

Welcome to Puzzle Road!

The puzzle of today (I said you yesterday I would do that!) is very complicated for a player that normally play solidly. For an aggressive player, a little less complicate, but still not easy to solve!

This tactic does checkmate Black! But how? There are many possibilities to blunder with White and you will need to play exactly the move that I will show you here, or your opponent will survive to your attack!

6/ A checkmate in remembrance of Bobby Fischer! (Topic: sacrifice)

I think it’s clear that Black is standing bad: a king that has castled but is not really in security. A Bishop which attacks the h7 pawn, a Queen which attacks he h5 pawn… impossible (normally) to survive with Black if you play the correct moves! Let’s see which these moves are!

First move: Bishop f6 (!!)

Here’s the sacrifice! 1. Bxh7 is useless, because of 1. … Kxh7, 2. Qxh5 / Kg8, 3. F5 and it’s not really checkmate! This move (1. Bf6) has been similarly played 1963 by Fischer against Benko: instead of playing Bf6, he had played Rf6 but the idea was literally the same! If we first play 1. Qxh5, Black can still play h6 and no checkmate anymore! Our bishop does block the f5-square: we can’t play Qf5 to checkmate at the next move (or to win the queen after f6).
If we hadn’t played 1. Bf6, after taking the h5 pawn with our Queen, Black could play f5 to win a tempo and liberate one square (f7) for the black king and avoid our checkmate attack!
Black should normally play now 1. … / Nd7, but it doesn’t stop the checkmate, so will imagine that Black does take with the e-pawn on the f6-square. By taking with the Bishop, Black allows White 2. Qxh5, because 2.h6 is not playable anymore (the pawn is not defended by the Bishop that does stand now on f6!).

Second move: Queen x h5!

Logic! We take the pawn and want to play next 3. Qxh7#. To stop for one move more the attack, Black can play f5, but this time, the square f5 can be taken by the queen, because the bishop does not stand anymore on the g5-square!
Now, Black can:
- Give up!
- Play a move and let us checkmate on h7!

Good game my friends! Now, you can play like Fischer to checkmate and you have learned a new way to liberate you queen for a checkmate attack!

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Have a great day and have fun in playing chess,
@Kyu13

More blogs written by @Kyu13:
The main question: How to become a stronger player?
The Scotch Game: A good opening?
Reach 2000 with this trick used by GMs!

Puzzle Road:
[Puzzle Road] Attack, Block and Take! (P1)
[Puzzle Road] Check the king for a good promotion! (P2)
[Puzzle Road] Bishops vs. Pawns: fight for a draw! (P3)
[Puzzle Road] Go out of my way! (P4)
[Puzzle Road] Unbelievable, I missed that! (P5)