my knight pinning addiction is less bad if i learn to embed puzzles in my posts right?

white has made a mistake. can you punish it and come out ahead?

if you drag the right piece to the right spot, the game will progress. ill present the position without hints first, then go thru how the game got here and how it went. (in the actual game, i made a worse move.)

black to move:

this position is from a game i played against coach david bot today. i wish i had found the good move, so now it is a puzzle and i can live my fantasies.

the start of this strategic sequence was with this pawn move on a full board. i started seeing opportunities to break thru and start winning material. i had eyes on these pawns that were suddenly very juicy looking:

the backwards pawn is only protected by the knight. but if i take and it takes, then the other pawn is unprotected, and not only that, i get my favorite thing in the very universe: a knight pin!  

yes, i considered the good move of kicking the protecting knight with my pawn first, so that mine doesnt get taken. but then i dont get to pin it. (yesterday i posted about how i need an intervention for my knight pin addiction. i see i have not grown at all.)

considering the above position, from two moves earlier, it was feeling pretty awesome. yeah i lose a knight for two pawns, but theres a 3rd one now hanging, and my awesome knight pin has the potential to be the best fork ever.

looking at the position with my eyes instead of imagination, its easier to see that the white queen can easily move in to protect both the knight and pawn. so this plan of mine wasnt actually so big-brained after all.

i did manage to scare my opponent into trying to kick my bishop with a pawn instead.

is my fork done for? what is my next move?

if only i could take the knight to escape this pawn threat, and then succeed in my fork. im down 1 point of material in exchange for having this pin, and i dont want to give it up.

i just need that pesky queen to get off rank 3!

well, in the game i played, the engine called my next move the “best move”. it gets me back up to even in material, and lets my bishop live another day. but theres an element to this position i hadnt considered until i analysed the later position where the opening puzzle starts. and so when i looked back on this "best move," i realized theres an even better move.

so here it is in puzzle form. find the move the game review called “brilliant”, and then follow thru until ur ahead 3 points of material. black to move:

but in my game i chased the queen with the knight like this, and she made suboptimal moves to back away:

so now we are back to the original puzzle. i was trying to chase the queen away from my juicy fork, and force moves that would delay the pawn eyeing my pinning bishop. and in this game, when i considered taking on b2 with my other bishop as a forcing move that threatens the queen and rook, i did see these two forking crossroads:

but i didnt see them both at once. i thought: if i take b2, the queen will just take back, and i lose my bishop.

the reality is that if queen takes my bishop, rank 3 is clear and i can do my super fork, winning both the knight and rook in exchange! white has to prioritize preventing the king fork, and so i have time to win the queen fork.

so thats the move i wish i had thought of.

i simplified it in the puzzle version, because whites best sequence responds with Bh5+ as a little zwischenzug before taking the bishop.

one reason i talked myself out of the bishop g2 move was cuz i was worried about something like the following position, if i had gone in with the rook just one move earlier instead of continuing to chase the queen: i got in with my bishop and im up on material, but its mate in 10.

is coach david bot smart enough to find the mate in 10? what makes this position so much worse than the one following the line of the brilliant knight move?

in this one, the queen is threatening my g pawn, ready to start wreaking havoc, rather than across the board where i have time to improve and castle.

but at my level, i might be similarly bad in either position. im just lucky coach david bot took it easy on me.

i won on move 71, after a very careful and conservative endgame. i was just so excited to finally be winning against coach david, and i wanted the sure thing. 

but as one final puzzle, as a special treat, find the mate in 2 that i missed on move 53:

full game, with the alternate lines and commentary. im playing as black, so press the flip board button to see it from my perspective.

coaches, conquered!