
Tactical Themes: Obstruction (+ Video)
Hello everyone. As you already know, tactics is a very important aspect of the game if you want to raise your level. In this post, I’m going to try to help you to improve, explaining 5 puzzles, where you have to win using Obstruction Tactical Theme.
Before we begin, I would like to tell you that this has been a great week. I continued working very hard for my next tournament. I got a 40 in Puzzle Rush, I still think I can do it better, so, I’m in the right way to beat Nakamura’s score (55).
Let’s go back to our theme, we do an Obstruction (I’ve heard about this as Blocking as well), when we put an obstacle in the way to scape of some opponent’s piece. Usually (but not always), that piece is the king.
I would like to add that here I’m not talking about Interference (or Interception). I’ve seen some confusion with this, but, actually, I think Interception is a different concept (I will be covering it here in some next post), so I prefer to work with Obstruction and Interception as different tactical themes.
Let’s see some examples. I encourage you to try to find the solutions for some minutes.
In this video you can find variations and explanations for 5 diagrams.
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** (Right click in the question mark (?) to see the solutions, also it’s all explained in the video)
Position 1
Position 2
(By the way, this is what we call a smothered mate)
Position 3
Position 4
Position 5
Also, it’s important you to know, that if you feel you need to improve some particular tactical idea or theme you can do it on Chess.com Tactics Trainer, in the unrated and custom options you can select the one you would like to practice.
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