Beneath the Surface

I always think of playing Chess as gazing out at an Ocean, not knowing what lurks underneath. There are treasures all waiting to be found, but also Mermaids to tempt you to stray. And whilst you are fixated on all this, monsters may be creeping up from under your boat!

It's scary when you don't know what you don't know! After completing a game on the White side of an anti-Sicilian Bb5, I spent my post mortem time analysing the endgame as to whether either side could gain advantage.

It was not till I turned on the Silicon Beast that it revealed a tactical shot I never even considered.

White to Move

With Black's Queen on the same firing line as the Rook on e1, it never occured to me there was a way to exploit the pinned e-pawn. Alas, I played positionally with 17. a4 with a view to expand on the Queenside.

I completely missed that I can clear the d-file to exploit the pinned e-pawn via 17. Nxe6! which unleashes the d-Rook against d5.

The lesson I've learnt here is to continually look for alarm bells, which will lead to looking for tactics if something doesn't look right!

My Game Annotations and Analysis