The Power of The Pin

After having fun chess blitzing last month, I switched to slightly slower chess, 10 minutes rapid. Pin is one of the most difficult concept to notice in chess and I was quite happy that I can use the power of pin for once in my game. 

But this was really a story about a brave c pawn. The story started in move 9. White light bishop captured my knight at c6 and checked my king. My knight was also under threat by white dark bishop too.

I should just captured the light bishop with my knight and let my c pawn be gobbled up by the dark bishop but somehow I chose to capture the bishop with my b pawn and my knight was lost to the dark pawn and my c pawn was still under threat of the dark bishop. I also ended up with bad isolated pawn structure. 

I was trying to find a way to protect my c pawn without moving my king so that I could castle king side later on. The solution seemed simple enough to me then, move my light bishop to check then on the next move I could castle queen side and bring my rook to open d file at the same time. My king would protect my c pawn and my rook would get activated. Great idea, so off go the light bishop. 

Black responded with f3 !!! I totally didn't expect this. Now my light bishop is under threat too. I could proceed with my castling plan then withdraw my bishop to safety. But somehow with so many pieces under threat, putting the king behind bad pawn structure felt wrong. Instead of castling, I just move my rook to d6 check. 

Somehow I felt that c7 pawn had a very important role in this game and I was trying my best to preserve it. I was about to move my rook to d2 when I saw the opportunity to at least take f3 pawn away so I did just that. I did consider taking the knight for a while but my instinct told me to keep the c7 pawn alive. After my bishop took the pawn at f3 and killed in his duty, I moved my rook to d7 to protect the c7 pawn. 

At this point I was down 2 knights, up 2 pawns and somehow felt with a little bit of luck the game is still winnable and I was still excited to see what c7 pawn would do in this game and on move 15, my c7 pawn was ready to come into action. I offered exchange of bishop on move 15. After the exchange, my c7 pawn took his place at d6 and my pawn structure was a bit better now.

I brought my king to castle on move 17 and the brave pawn go into one crazy ride thanks to the power of the pin. On move 18, the pawn moved to d5 to threaten the knight and the knight side stepped to c5 and threatened my isolated a pawn and my rook. Instead of moving my rook to protect the pawn I urged the rook forward to d6, keeping the pin to the king. The knight quickly pounced on the free a pawn.   

I pushed the pawn forward to d4 and the knight jump in to d3 to stop him, but the brave pawn took down c3 pawn and exposing the knight to my rook and pinned to the king. 

His rook came forward to protect the knight and I stacked my other rook to d8. The other knight hopped back to b4 to protect the knight. On move 23, the brave pawn took down another pawn at b2 and threaten the rook. 

The rook slided over to b file and the brave pawn seemed to be at the end of his journey. I was thinking hard to find a way to protect the pawn and ended up moving my pawn to c5 to threaten the knight. I was hoping that the knight will move away so that I can move one of my rook to b file to protect the pawn. 

But the brave pawn was killed by the rook on the next move. My mission changed from protecting the pawn to taking revenge on the rook. Rook to b8 !!! If the knight decided to move away, I would took the rook. d3 knight that seemingly protecting the rook could not move because the knight is pinned to the king. If the knight didn't move, the pawn would ate the knight and charge forward. 

But the knight move away c2 and my revenge on the rook was complete. (knight to d5 would actually allow my rook to be captured back since the knight would be blocking the pin, but I didn't see this move then) 

After few more moves, white resign after blundering the knight to d6. 

Below are the PGN file. I hope everyone enjoy this brave pawn story. See you all in my next chess adventure.