
Today's Daily Puzzle 7/19/20: Don't Give Up
Today's daily puzzle at first glance seems pretty cut and dry: black's knight is being threatened and is pinned against his queen. So it's bye-bye knight right? Nope! Don't ever assume that pieces that seem to be lost at first glance are really lost. Don't give up! Always looks for ways out of the predicament you seem to be in! If black can find a resourceful maneuver, he could potentially end up saving his knight and be up a piece!
How to do this? As I've mentioned before, start scanning for loose pieces! We sometimes don't look for queens to be "loose" in that sense of the word. Usually we look for minor pieces that are loose, but an undefended queen is an undefended queen. Let's see how we can take advantage of this fact:
Did you expect anything less from Bobby Fischer? How did you do today? Did you solve the puzzle or fall for the Nxb4 idea? Comment below!
This game came from a candidates match that he played against Victor Korchnoi, arguably one of the strongest chess players who never earned the title of World Champion. For your viewing pleasure, see below the full game in its entirety. I've also added a bit of commentary on the very last position where Korchnoi resigned.