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One Of The Best Moves I've Ever Played

One Of The Best Moves I've Ever Played

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Cosmic_Pikachu
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This post is dedicated to one of the best moves I've ever played in my OTB career. This move satisfies several qualities of a brilliant move including difficulty to find, understanding of the position and importance to the course of the game. However, the quality I find most intriguing is that although the move is subtle and quiet - probably would only score a great move on the chess.com game review, I am confident that most players below 2000 online ELO (~1700-1800 FIDE) would not find this move.

The move in question was played at a classical tournament (60|30) in my local club a few months ago. I've decided to keep the identities of both players anonymous. My opponent, playing with the white pieces, was a much younger and lower rated player, but emerging and very strong. 

I don't want to go into too much depth about the complications of the opening, such as why c7 was uncapturable. It's clear that neither player has made a major error or had a substantial advantage, and the position is rather drawish and frankly, boring to play. It's hard to imagine a 'brilliant' move arising in the following moves in this position.

White reaches a favourable position, but is unable to create a meaningful advantage and the game fizzles out into a drawn endgame. However, it is nowhere near over. Black's passing h pawn creates an imbalance, and white must always be cautious. In a difficult position, white makes a terrible blunder - 33. f4??

Let this position be a puzzle. Black has only one move to keep a winning advantage. To find the best move in this position, you must be aware of several positional factors.

Pawn endgame puzzles can be incredibly difficult as you can't just rely on calculation - visualisation and evaluation are required.

Although the material balance is equal, the position is very unbalanced. The pawn structure on the queenside is a 2 on 2, meaning that no passed pawn will emerge. This focuses the attention to the centre and kingside. Black has a powerful passed h-pawn that must not go unnoticed. White's king must always remain near it to prevent it from promoting. However, white balances this with a 2 on 1 in the centre. Black is unable to simply run the h-pawn down the board, as white can capture it with their king and use their central pawn majority, placing pawns on e3 and f3 to prevent black from entering with their king. If the black king steers too far away from the centre, white can even consider creating a dangerous central passed pawn.

The move which was played managed to completely remove white's counterplay. Black's plan of pushing the h-pawn became unstoppable, as without white being able to create a shield of pawns on f3 and e3, black's king was able to enter and win white's pawns.

Perhaps 33. f3 was a better try, creating the aforementioned wall to prevent black's king from entering, and the game should end in a draw as black's h-pawn will be stopped in time.
The game concluded in through the following moves:
Something I find interesting about the puzzle position is that the move 33... Kf6 looks so natural and there is a high chance that is what I would play in a blitz or rapid game, yet it throws away all of black's advantage.
Anyways, thank you if you reached this point. Chess is my passion and writing about it helps me follow my passion in a way that's productive and where I am improving at skills other than chess. I hope you enjoyed!