Post positions of your most "intuitive" wins!

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Avatar of pbrocoum

One of the things I enjoy most as I get better at chess is watching my intuition improve. What do I mean by "intuition"? Well, we all know what the opposite of intuition is: when our opponent makes a move and we think, "Dang it, I'm getting crushed." Intuition is the feel we get for a position without actually doing any calculation. So, without any further ado, I would like to share a recent "intuitive victory" of mine with you.

In this position I was a bit concerned with the seemingly imminent pawn storm against my king. However, my opponent decided to castle to "safety" first, and I instantly KNEW that the game was over and that I was going to win. Within a millisecond, I knew this.

Sure enough, there are a dozen good moves for black to attack the castled white king and win material, but that's not the point: the point is that I didn't have to do any calculating, my brain instantly knew intuitively that white was hopelessly lost after long castling.

Of course, it was a giant blunder by my opponent, and of course there are technical motifs present, but I still think it's cool the instant feeling you can get just from looking at a chess position. I'm not even sure what set off my feeling of "I've won". I think it just seemed that I could instantly move my queen too close for comfort to the white king.

Anyway, feel free to share some of your own positions that instantly gave you a feeling one way or the other about the game.