Advanced Chess Tactics: BLOCKING
Hello dear chess loving friends,it's Shamrat Hyder again back with another blog post discussing a very important advanced chess tactics that is BLOCKING.
Have you ever found yourself in a position of chess where you can checkmate your opponent if some pieces of your opponent just disappear ! Probably many times right?However you cannot just make your opponent's pieces disappear ,but what you can do is block those pieces by using your pieces in a tactical way and create strong threats .That's called Blocking ! Let me show you some examples so it becomes clear to you how useful and strong this tactics can be !
Example:1
Why not start with a position from game of Robert James Fischer vs Pal Benko in US Chess Championship 1963,
Fischer vs Benko,White to move
If you first look at the position you can see black king is very weak as two active pieces are aiming on h7 square,playing e5 looks tempting right?With a discover attack on knight and simultaneous checkmate threat.However,thats not a good move,lets see what happens if you play e5,
Black just plays f5 forcing exchange of queens,so not good.So what you should do in such positions? You see the problem arises as black can play f5 ,to block that path,Fischer played a brilliant move, Rf6 !! Now the threats of e5 is deadly a threat and black has no good way to stop threats on h7.Lets see one of the checkmate variations,
Other variations leads black to easy defeats,you may try them on chess board.Fischer won this game with this brilliant tactics.
So I hope you get a grasp on the tactical idea ,lets go through the second example !
Example 2:
David Navara vs Daus,White to move
In this position white has so many threats if some of black's pieces were not there,So you can smell the blocking tactics.Just like the previous example,Navara played Rc6 and reached the position from the thumbnail. You can see the beauty of the move,the more you look at it the more you get amazed.It blocks the defenders of the poor king on f7 and makes the threats deadlier .Wonderful example of blocking. Lets see what happens if the rook is taken,
Variatiion:1
variation 2:
variation 3:
You need to make precise calculation before making such moves and check all possible variations.
Now lets check some puzzles on this beautiful tactic!
Puzzle 1: White to move
Puzzle 2: White to move
Puzzle 3: Black to move
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