Tuesday, 27 March 2018

Being a smarty-pants

The diagrammed position came from a club game I played recently. I was a little luck that my opponent had given me a piece in time trouble, but there was still a bit of work to be done in the ending. I could have gone down the slow and steady route, but I spotted a couple of nice tricks in the position that lead me to a fancier way of winning.

32.e5+ Kf5 33.Nh4+ Kg5 34.Ke4! Trick number 1. If 34... Kxh4 then 35.Kxf4 imprisons the Black king and allows the e pawn to promote. 34...f3 35.gxf3 Kxh4 36.fxg4 hxg4 Setting up trick number 2. 37.e6 g3 38.Kf3! And here it is. The Black king is forced to an unfavourable square. 38...Kh3 39.e7 g2 40.e8Q Now promoting to anything but a knight allows mate in 1, while promoting to a knight doesn't help. 40...Kh2 41.Qe2 1-0


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