Ricky Hatton

During my White Collar Boxing days, I was a big fan of Ricky Hatton.

Simply, he was a master of body shots.

However, in boxing it's not so easy to simply attack the body. Good boxers can see it coming. An advanced skill is to change the angle of attack, going one way, but attacking the other way

The following YouTube video shows Ricky explaining how he changes the angle for a body attack

And how does this relate to Chess?

See if you can solve the following tactical problem that I missed in today's training

Blokh Diagram 521 Difficulty 11

My Shortcomings

I had become fixated on going straight ahead, with no subtlety. I soley looked at the idea of 1. h5 gh 2. gh

From here I had in mind following up with 3. h6 Qf8 4. Nxe6 fe 5. h7+ Kg7 6. Qxf8 Kxf8 7. h8=Q +-

The calculation became "fuzzy" in my mind, and I tried to "justify" to myself that whatever Black played on move 2 couldn't prevent this 

Changing the angle of attack

They say the hardest moves to find are where the Queen moves backwards. Euwe was known to be exceptional at finding retreating Queen moves

Rather than plough through by storming the castled King, I didn't consider changing the angle of attack

Candidate moves (or ideas). Time and again I fail to list them out before I start calculating. Often I pick a tempting line, explore it, then try and work the assessment in my favour

Why does this tactic work?

White can seize control of the c-file with his Queen.

Black's Queen is passive, and he lacks space

Black's back rank is weak

There is a geometry at f7 between e5 and h8

Have I seen this idea before?

As a trivia, can you identify this game where a similar tactical geometry occurs 

Can you beat Magnus Carlsen?

Nakamura obtained this winning position against Carlsen at the Zurich 2014 tournament. However he played d6 and eventually lost.

Can you find the move from the diagrammed position (Hint: Similar theme to the tactical puzzle)