Friday, February 11, 2011

How to get out of trouble?


BLACK TO PLAY

SOLUTION

As i solved this position from the book practical chess defense (which i must say is an excellent book written by Jacob Aagaard) the above position caught my eye for its simplicity.

first of all i thought a lot as to how i could defend against the threat of taking on f6 and then swinging hois rook over to the kingisde and i came up with 1...Kh8 but then 2Nf6! Bf6 3Bf6 gf6 4.Qh5 and now Rh3 is a threat so 4...Rg8 5.Qf7 and i would never like to be in black's shoes here.

1...Nd5 is highly interesting as move like Bh6 is met with Nc7 and white cannot follow up his attack. but after cd5 2Bg5 de6 white is slightly better.

To find the answer i am sure that there is some very basic knowledge which i learnt when i was young which has to be applied here. that is, always calculate the checks and captures first. of course there are no checks. but captures, yes there are and the first one that comes to mind is 1....Ng4!! which allows a fork but is surprisingly the answer to this problem! 2.Be7 Qc7! yes you guessed it right! A double attack on h2 and e7. 3.Qg4 Qe7 and it is certain that black has superb chances to win this position.

Why would be this position be tough to solve?

I dont know whether you all got the answer easily or it took some while, but i didnt get the answer maybe because i wasnt thinking that the solution can be so easy especially because the position is amidst other ones which are tough! Unforcing thinking is the key!

What does unforcing thinking mean?

Quite simply put unforcing thinking means to think unconventionally. In this position unforcing thinking was to allow the fork by the Bishop. Often we see the fork and reject the variation but unforcing thinking implies to look further into variations which at first sight seem absurd!

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