Thursday 2 September 2010

Short wins versus easy wins


One of the traps you can fall into when doing computer aided analysis is to worry about missing short wins. The diagrammed position has both a 'short' win and an easy win, with my computer jumping up and down about the 'short' win (Kd6!). It comes from a rapid game I played a couple of days ago with a time limit of 20m+10s per move. In fact I chose the easy win starting with 44.Ng8 h5 45.Nf6 h4 46.Kd4 when I simply planned to wander over to the kingside and pick up the pawns. This was mainly motivated by the clock situation, where I felt that wasting time in finding a quicker win when am easier one was available, would be counter-productive. In the end I didn't quite get to the pawns as my opponent eventually played Kc7&b6, when axb6 left his king unable to scurry back after I played e6.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think this position is a good example of easy win vs. fast win. What could be simpler, easier here than to play Kd6, e6 and e7?
To me, Ng8 looks a way too complicated and not simple.

Paul said...

I welcome a win anytime it occurs...:-)