Skills Chess

7/24/2019 Skills Chess

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Contents

Symbols 5Introduction 6

Part 1: The Basic Skills

1 The Hunters 7Long-Range Pieces 7

The Queen 7The Rook 10The Bishop 14

Short-Range Pieces 16The Knight 16The King 22The Pawn 26

Exercises 29

2 Crowd Control 31Liberty or Death 31A Tale of Two Positions 36Exercises 38

3 Float Like a Butterfly 40The Landmine Exercise 41Give-Away Chess 47

Exercises 48

4 Dollars and Sense 50Up or Down 50Table of Values 51Cinderella 53The Officers 57Exercises 60


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5 Wall Street 62Fair Trades 62Bad Trades 66Proper Sequencing 67Exercises 71

6 Homeland Security 73The TRIP Method of Defence 73

Take 73Run 74

Interpose 77Protect 79

Exercises 91

7 Regicide 92The Bear Hug 92Quad Mates 95Back-Rank Mate 97Exercises 101

Part 2: The Fabulous Five: The Skills in Action

Paul Morphy Duke of Brunswick / Count Isouard, Paris 1858 104Wilhelm Steinitz Curt von Bardeleben, Hastings 1895 112Mikhail Botvinnik Milan Vidmar, Nottingham 1936 121Donald Byrne Robert Fischer, New York 1956 126Bent Larsen Boris Spassky, Belgrade 1970 133

Solutions to Exercises 138

Glossary 154Dedication 157Acknowledgements 157Index of Games 158

4 THEMOSTVALUABLESKILLS INCHESS


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REGICIDE

7 Regicide

In life, unlike chess, the game continuesafter checkmate.ISAACASIMOV

Skill 7: Knowing how to execute basiccheckmates

The word checkmate has power. Like amagical incantation, it confers victory overthe mind of another. Grandmasters whohave played thousands of games in theirlong careers still love to utter the word. Itmakes the eyes light up, the pulse quickenand a smile come from the inside out. Mostsports have an external force that signalsthe end of the game: a buzzer, a finish line,an umpires call. In chess, the player whoshows the most cunning, grit, skill and cre-ativity gets to say with total finality that thebattle has truly ended.

Before you can magically pull off acheckmate (or mate, as most tournamentplayers say), its important to know themost typical ones. In Murray Chandlersbrilliantly simple bookHow To Beat YourDad at Chess, the author shows a numberof famous checkmates in depth. Since thisis a book on the basics, this chapter will de-vote itself to the checkmates that are a must

for the new player.

The Bear Hug

The most important checkmate of all hasno name. I call it the Bear Hug because itsmothers the king completely, giving it noroom to breathe and no possibility of es-cape. Take a look at what makes the BearHug so lethal:

The black kinghas nomoves as the queenis not only attacking it, but is also control-ling four flight-squares. This would be atotally dominant position except for onething: the queen needs protection. Withoutthe pawn on d6, the queen would instantlysuffer the fate of any piece that dares to en-ter the kings inner chamber without back-up. As it stands, the king has been mated.

Naturally, any piece can help the queencarry out her deadly mission:

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Bear Hugs occur in all sorts of situa-tions:

White plays 1 h6! and the game isover. Black cannot stop checkmate on g7.

In this position, the black knight is pre-venting the Bear Hug on h7. White plays1xf6! xf6. Now another knight standsguard, so White continues with 2 xf6!(D).

Both knights have been eliminated andthe threat of checkmate is still there. Blackcannot stop it by playing 2...h6 because thenWhite will break through with 3 xh6+!,when 3...gxh6 is met by 4 xh6+ g8 5h7#. Black must play 2...e4, when3xe4 leads to a decisive material advan-tage for White.

REGICIDE 93

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In the above diagram, Blacks queen androok would deliver a Bear Hug on c2, if notfor the white queen standing guard. Blackstarts by playing 1...h6!. The white queencannot leave to capture the bishop, nor canit move away since the king would be incheck. White can try 2 g5but2...xg5!continues the joke. After 3 f4 xf4! 4 e3xe3 White has to defend against the mate(with 5 d3, for instance) and part with thequeen.

Bear Hugs can show up when you leastexpect them:

The white king appears to be well de-fended. However, this is only a mirage. Af-ter 21...f3! White wakes up to realizethat his king is being surrounded by deadlyscorpions. The black bishop cannot be cap-tured since 22 gxf3 is met by the devastat-ing 22...h3!, when there is no way to stopthe mate on g2. White panicked and played22 e3only to be greeted with the bone-crunching22...h3!!(anyway!). An inde-fensible Bear Hug is threatened on g2 andthe queen is untouchable because 23 gxh3

loses instantly to 23...xh3#. Seeing theseembarrassing options, White threw in thetowel. (The desperate but spectacular 22e6! was his best chance, when 22...fxe623 gxf3 d5! wins either the f3- or the a2-pawn.)

The struggle for the Bear Hug Mate cansometimes get very complex:

With a fantastic bishop lurking on b7,Black can fantasize about giving mate bydropping his queen into g2. In fact, thereare several ways to bring this about, allbased on moving the knight out of the way.For instance:

a) 1...a5!is the most obvious, as it at-tacks the white queen and prepares to bringthe black queen to h3 or c6. White has nodefence.

94 THEMOSTVALUABLESKILLS INCHESS

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Lengyel MikhalevskiBudapest 1993

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b) 1...d4!is also effective, but a littlemore complex; e.g., 2 cxd4 h3 3 d5xd5!? 4 d4 and now 4...xh2+! mates.

c) 1...e5! is more spectacular. If Whiteaccepts the sacrifice with 2 fxe5, Blackplays the crushing 2...c6!, threatening3...g2#. White can try to prevent ...c6by2 d4, but Black replies2...h3!(D),when the Bear Hug Mate quickly triumphs.

Quad Mates

Quad stands forQueenalongdiagonal. Itis the cousin of the Bear Hug and rivals it inimportance. The next diagram shows themost famous Quad mate, theScholars Mate(a.k.a. the Four-Move Checkmate):

Notice that the queen is not flatteningthe king as it did in the Bear Hug, needingthe queen on d8 to block the one square theQuad mate does not cover.

As popular as the Scholars Mate is, itpales in comparison to the following Quadmate:

This mate on h7 is critical to rememberbecause most good players remove theirkings from the centre by castling kingside.Because of the specifics of the initial set-up,it is very easy for the f1-bishop to get to d3,the g1-knight to get to g5, and the queen toget to h5. The only hindrance to the con-quest of the square is usually a knight on f6.If that piece is captured or diverted, check-mate often follows:

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Skills Chess