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Hi everyone! This is Pomi. And now I'm going to show you an important tool in chess, its name is Decoy. What is the Decoy? The decoy is a chess tactic that forces a piece to move to a specific square, to make a forced mate, for gaining material, for doing a tactic, etc. What is the difference of a decoy and a deflection? Deflection: Is when you want a piece to leave a specific square, or a specific group of squares. It doesn't matter where it goes, we just want it to leave that place. Decoy: Is when you want a piece to go to a specific square. We don't just want it to leave its square, we want it on that specific square. Examples: Here we can win a Queen using and promote a pawn using a decoy: . . . Here we can deliver checkmate using a decoy: . . . Here we can fork two important pieces using a decoy: . Why are decoys important? Decoy (as many other chess tactics) are important because they can help you generally gaining material, delivering checkmate, or promoting a pawn. But you can use it for many other things, like improving your position, or have a better development, it's less usual tho. Also, I personally consider it one of the most beautiful tactics in chess. Thanks for reading! I hope you can use this in your games! Also, thanks @tsrif1 for helping me with the article

Countering the Scholar's Mate With a Queen Though using knights to block the Scholar's Mate is effective, there are ways that you can not only block the mate, but also put your queen in a good position to deliver a great counterattack to the opposing team. It is also simple and easy to remember. As you can see, placing the queen on f6 is a prominent move to stop the opposing queen from delivering the Qf7# move. Placing your queen on e7 will also work as well. If done correctly you can safely protect your king without taking risks. Countering the Scholar's Mate With a Pawn Another simple piece you can use to block the Scholar's Mate is with a pawn. There are two easy ways to do this. Here is the first example: With this example, you can see that the Queen is blocked from doing her move and on the next move, white has no choice but to retreat the queen back and that gives you more time to bring your more powerful pieces out. Here is a pawn move that gives your king an opportunity to escape if white somehow makes the queen all the way to that spot: Just that simple move will block most of the problems that come with this type of event. That is a less recommended move, but if you are in a situation and you don't have time (such as in Bullet), this could be a quick idea. This concludes the Scholar's Mate.

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Hi everyone! This is Pomi. And now I'm going to show you a what are sacrifices on chess, and when you can make them. What's a sacrifice in chess? A sacrifice in chess is when you give up material for some other advantage. They are generally followed by a combination that allows us to promote a pawn, force a checkmate, have a more active position, or another advantage. Look at this example: When there's a sacrifice in the opening, it is called a gambit. One example is the King's Gambit. Here are some examples of famous sacrifices. Why are sacrifices important? These are the main uses of the sacrifices: Opening: Playing agressive gambits Playing traps that can make someone win the game Middle game: Opening lines to attack our opponent's king Endgame: Promoting pawns Simplifying the position Forcing checkmate If you know when, and how to sacrifice, they can lead you to win very beautiful games, as the ones I showed you. Thanks for reading! I hope you can use this in your games! Also, thanks @tsrif1 for helping me with the article

Hello. Below are 10 puzzles. Time yourself and see how long it will take to solve all of them. If you would like me to post more puzzles, let me know. Good luck!

Hello everyone, and welcome to the second part of my tactical themes series. Today we will be discussing pins in parts 3 and 4. There are two types we will be discussing: absolute and relative pins. Let's get to it. Part 3: Absolute Pins Absolute pins are pins where the piece being pinned is unable to move. Look at the position below from the Ruy Lopez. As you can see, the knight cannot move since the bishop pins it to the king, because it will be check. Part 4: Relative Pins Relative pins are pins where the piece can move, but it probably shouldn't since a piece of more worth is hiding behind it. Refer to the position below. The knight can move, but if it does, the queen will be taken by the bishop. Test out your knowledge in the examples below. Please don't answer in comments. I really hope that you learned something. I will be posting the next lesson sometime soon. Bye, @shashm. Previous Posts: Common Tactical Themes Part 1

Hello The Pawns Club members. Welcome to my series of common tactical themes. Let's get right to it. Part 1: Demolition of Pawn Structure Demolition of Pawn Structure means that a player ruins the pawn structure of their opponent, sometimes it can be the structure in front of the king, which can get very sharp and tactical. Here is a very sharp tactic. Part 2: Hit and Run This is not an official tactic. This is just a combination of a Remove the Defender and another tactic while defending your piece. Don't understand? Look at the example below. Site I am using to make this series: Click Me If you enjoy, come back the next time I make parts 3 and 4. Bye, @shashm.

Scholar's Mate The Scholar's mate is one of the most common checkmates in chess, and if the opponent does not know how to counter it, extremely effective. There are dozens of outcomes of the Scholar's Mate and many variables to consider, but first, what does a Scholar's Mate look like in the first place? That is the most common example of the Scholar's Mate. Note how the Queen is protected by the Bishop with no piece to challenge it; that's one reason that makes this move so effective. Another reason is that it may be hard to see it coming and you may not be expecting such a simple four move checkmate. So, if this move is so effective, how would one challenge it? How is such an effective move countered? Well, as you will soon learn, it is just as effective an d simple to counter. In a sense, it is a Scholar's Situation for both sides. Countering the Scholar's Mate With a Knight Since there are many ways to block the Scholar's mate, we should go over the lot of them. First, we will start with countering the move with the knight: If you see in that diagram, moving the King-side Knight before the Queen has a chance to move over towards that area, it blocks both ways the queen would have a strong attack on it. Both from the column and the diagonal. That is the most common block. That one is good, but there is one even better knight block that we will discuss. Here it is: If you look carefully, placing the knight on its move to the edge of the board, it made it so the queen would get captured when it went on what would've been the winning square. What makes that block so effective is that it is easily looked over and so it is good for fooling your opponent. In the next lesson, we will find out ways to block it with the Queen, and even a Pawn.

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Hello. Here is today's daily puzzle.

Hey mates! I'm continuing my 1970 Palma de Mallorca Interzonal Saga for Fischer, this game against Reshevsky. It was a brilliancy by Fischer, who played a 99.2 accuracy in this game and obliterated his fellow American. If you haven't checked out the other games by Fischer, please do so you can see how my analysis works on these games. I'm making 15-minute analysis for each of them, no matter how long, how short. https://www.chess.com/blog/Chessdemon2019/1970-palma-de-mallorca-interzonal-fischer-vs-taimanov https://www.chess.com/blog/Chessdemon2019/1970-palma-de-mallorca-interzonal-smyslov-vs-fischer I'm still trying to make higher quality analyses, so please share some feedback on my videos so that I can improve! Here it is: If you enjoyed it, please subscribe by clicking here Every once in a while, my viewers become extremely excited and watch my videos for longer! My previous blog post (see above for link) didn't reach my happy amount of 750 views, but it ranked highest on the amount of views compared to my other Palma de Mallorca series videos. So thank you . I hope I can keep this up! Please subscribe if you haven't already so that my channel keeps growing. Subscribers grow exponentially, which is why my chess channel only has a bit more than 200, while some already popular channels got 1500+ subscribers (such as @SamCopeland's channel!) Thanks for Reading! CM Chessdemon2019 P.S I have just hit 1000 followers!! Thank you guys! That is something not many people are able to achieve. If you would like to, please follow me so you won't miss out on my next blog post!! *My audio broke down in the previous video so I had to record it again! (At least it is higher quality )

Hi everyone! This is Pomi. And now I'm going to show you an important tactic in chess. This tactic is known as Removing the Defender. What's a hanging piece? A hanging piece is an undefended piece that can be captured. It can also be a piece that is defended, but not by enough pieces (1 defender vs 2 attackers, for example). Look at this position: Hanging pieces define most beginner games. Even masters have lost games because of them! We always have to be careful when we move, lest we have a hanging piece. What's removing the defender? Removing the defender is a tactic that consists on eliminating the defender of another piece, so after the exchange, it will be a hanging piece, and we can take it. Generally we can do it by exchanging it, but you can just attack it, or deflect it. Look at this example: Here's another example: Why is removing the defender important? It's important because this can make you win a lot of games, but mostly, because if you don't know what it is, you can lose a lot of games if you ignore it. Thanks for reading! I hope you can use this in your games! Also, thanks @tsrif1 for helping me with the article

Tactics Trainer

Hey chess geeks! Today I'm sharing the next game of Fischer in the 1970 Palma de Mallorca Interzonal Super Tournament. This game is Round 2 of the 23 games played, and it was played against Vasily Smyslov, most of you should know about him. The game was quite short, but extremely instructive. I have here a 15-minute video about the key ideas and why this game is so beautiful! Check it out! Please watch the full video if you don't want to waste your time. You can also check out my blog here: https://www.chess.com/blog/chessdemon2019 I thank the whole blogging community for checking out my blogs, they haven't dipped below 750 views, so I'm guessing I'm making them high quality! Thanks for the support!! (Seriously check out my blog, none of my recent blogs have <750 views ) You can also consider subscribing! I have seen many youtube channels grow exponentially as the more people subscribe, the more people will want to subscribe in the future! Every subscriber counts to me! Link to subscribing: Chessdemon2019 - YouTube Thanks for Reading!! CM Chessdemon2019 P.S I'm at 998 followers! You can follow me and then I will get to the 4-digit follower milestone!! Thanks!

One of the most famous endgames EVER played is the Fischer endgame, or the Rook and Bishop vs Rook and Knight endgame. Why is it called the Fischer endgame? Probably because Robert James Fischer is SO good at using it . He is able to convert seemingly impossible positions into wins, just by pure force. He is always able to demonstrate the power of the bishop vs the knight. Today I want to share with you a video on Fischer's masterpiece vs Taimanov (again). This will be the beginning of the 1970 Palma de Mallorca Interzonal series to cover Fischer's beautiful games. It was a 18.5/23 result! Here is the video!! If you watched the full video (it hurts when people don't ), you might have realized the power of the Fischer endgame. It was absolutely beautiful! If you thought that too, you might want to check out my other videos, and perhaps subscribe along the way . By the way, just wanted to say a BIG thanks to the blogging community. My views never dropped after a big drought for videos, so thanks for all the support!! Thanks for Reading!! CM Chessdemon2019

Hello. Below are several mate in four puzzles. Time yourself and see how long it will take to solve all of them. If you would like me to post more puzzles, let me know. Good luck!

Daily Puzzle August 28

Rating 1418