Okay, who knows the position?
White to move, answer below
At the recent Portsmouth Open, I lost a game to Kira Storm, a game in which I fell to a very pleasing combination (about which I wrote in my event report, which should appear in the next Chess Horizons magazine). Our postmortem suggested that I might have scraped a draw even after that combo, but my fall was of Chevy Chase caliber.
I have a longstanding aversion to doing computer analysis of games -- maybe because it seems too dry and tedious. I also have a longtime little-moving rating -- I wonder if there's any connection? Anyway, somewhat out of my normal routine, I recently did some such analysis of certain junctures in the Storm game. I was impressed to discover a tactical idea lurking in an unplayed variation, a type of tactic which I have traditionally (and often over-optimistically) trusted my chess powers to reveal.
However, I was even more excited to feel a bit of a connection to the above position after the computer revealed something we had both missed:
Kira Storm - Ken Ho
15 January 2012
After 16 Nf3-e5:
My plan was to exchange pieces and increase the pressure on White's d-pawn.
16...Nf4 17 Qe3 Bxe4 18 Qxe4??
18...Nfd5??
What can I say, one good massive oversight deserves another. Kira would have preferred 18 Qxf4 had he seen what was possible, and I of course would have preferred to have played 18...Qxd4! (winning White's d-pawn) instead of the text, since 19 Qxd4 is answered by 19...Ne2+ and 20...Nxd4. I'll probably never get another chance to play such a move ever again (sniff)....
The position at the top of this blog entry is Alekhine-Euwe, World Championship 1937 (16). Neither player noticed 27 Qh8+! (Euwe had just played 26...Bd7-c6) Kxh8 28 Nxf7+ and 29 Nxe5; the game was eventually drawn after 27 a3??.
Seeing how the computer program chess analysis was able to wake me up to some tactics that I totally overlooked brought home the point that it can seriously help reinforce the book-learning to which I've been contentedly clinging for years. From here forward I will be rather more interested in taking the Silicon Beast for a postmortem stroll. Time will tell whether my rating moves upward in tandem.
So...how to cook a pawn?
Under low pressure. When it's ready, stick a fork in it.
1 comment:
The big thing I learned from running my games through a computer engine (which I no longer have) is that win, lose or draw, the game is never over as quickly as I think it is. The individual tactics that an engine points out are important to learn, but that overarching lesson is the most important thing, I think.
Rick Massimo
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