Greedy pawn grabs = mate

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Avatar of Viznik

Learned this little tip from @B1ZMARK’s previous post grin.png my opponent was beating me up pretty good.. then he got greedy and decided to nab some hanging pawns. Opened the door for an easy back-rank mate 

A good lesson for anyone in a similar position; don’t just grab random pawns when you have your opponent’s king on the run!

Avatar of KeSetoKaiba
Viznik wrote:

...A good lesson for anyone in a similar position; don’t just grab random pawns when you have your opponent’s king on the run!

Taking it a step further, be careful with giving up the initiative or allowing your pieces to get inactive. Too often beginners will start chasing pawns with strong pieces like the Queen in the endgame, but the pawns captured are usually away from the action and this makes your capturing piece less active; similarly, you are typically giving up the initiative if you "waste time" taking unimportant pawns. 

Grabbing free material can be justified at lower level chess because they might not be as accurate in converting smaller advantages into a win (so of course take the free material!), but if you have enough confidence to convert the position into a winning position, then just do it instead of grabbing pawns etc.

Having the material lead is a nice advantage to have, but being up by +3 or +30 doesn't usually matter a ton more, so just start simplifying into an endgame you can confidently convert if you are up in material or go into a checkmating net/attack. When you get better at converting advantages, then some positions won't even require a +3 point lead, you might only need a single extra pawn more happy.png

Avatar of FriedDuckLiver

I had a similar game like this today he saw a free forked rook but missed the mate in 1 he was beating me well but then I gave 1 fatal kick in the brain boom I win

Avatar of WowThisIsWeird

Nice! I was just learning about back-rank checkmates in the chess.com lessons. Once I was playing a game (I can't remember, was it online or in real life?) and I saw that my opponent could back-rank checkmate me in like 3 moves, and I offered a draw. They accepted xD

Avatar of sndeww
Viznik wrote:

Learned this little tip from @B1ZMARK’s previous post  my opponent was beating me up pretty good.. then he got greedy and decided to nab some hanging pawns. Opened the door for an easy back-rank mate 

A good lesson for anyone in a similar position; don’t just grab random pawns when you have your opponent’s king on the run!

what do you mean "learning from my previous post"

Avatar of sndeww

oh it was this https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/that-moment-when-you-5 rip my memory