Hi there!

Dear nephew,

I hope you and your daddy are doing well (your mother too, of course). I have finally decided to start this blog as a way to share some of my chess impressions (especially Chess.com impressions) with you, according to what we talked a few weeks ago. It is in English, which I hope is no problem for you, so that perhaps other people can read it and who knows? even enjoy it at times.

This will be a short introductory post with a light appetizer. It was one of my first games in Chess.com and not a specially interesting one, save for a curious circumstance concerning one of White's knights. You can see this piece, as early as move 6, proudly standing on the e5 square where no black pawn can touch it (or should I say him? I definitely prefer him, he is a knight after all, although he looks like a horse). So, as I said, he is quite safe on e5 by move 6 and, since pawns cannot move backwards, he is expected to remain safe as long as he remains there. But...

Well, pawns cannot go backwards but they can (and must!) move diagonally when capturing. And so it happened: not one, but two pawns captured diagonally and the poor knight found himself threatened by both of them simultaneously! A rare situation, especially when the knight found out to his horror that most of his retreats were covered by other pawns and that, in the only safe square available, he would soon find himself pawn-chased again! A total six pawns collaborate to capture the knight.

In the following diagram you can replay the game. Comments on some of the moves are visible right below the board. Enjoy it!