This is yet another chess summer school Monday. Let’s consider it an advanced lesson in terms of the difficulty of the problem for beginners, but let’s also consider it an early lesson on thinking about a chess position. I have often pointed out the need on every move for players to look at all checks, captures and forced moves—for your opponent and you. You must look at what your opponent’s threats are. The best way not to overlook doing that is to make it a habit out of doing it first. What do you see here right away? Yes, Black is threatening to mate you on the move, so you’re going to have to check your opponent or discourage him from taking the rook. That’s one thing. Look at your check possibilities. There are several knight check possibilities. You should also notice that the king is trapped by the knights. Can you take advantage of that. Can you see, if you had two moves in a row, how you can mate Black on the second move? And back to the beginning, how do you deal with the mate threat? Can you play something that not only takes care of the mate threat, but forces Black to move so you can get something going? This is why chess players spend a lot of time thinking! See if you can reason all this out.

Solution:

You no doubt found there was a lot to think about. Let’s look at some possibilities: What White did was force the Black side to deal with a threat and remove the mate threat: 1.Ba3 Qxa3 [You would have to think also about 1...Qc4 2.Qf5 Bxa1 3.Nh5+ Ke8 4.Ng7+ Kd8 5.Nf7+ Qxf7 6.Qxf7;and 1...Bxf2+ 2.Kxf2 Qxg4 3.Nxg4 Ke8 4.Nxe5, both leaving won games for White. Now White also, having seen the mate in two threat, found a really cool way of finishing the game) 2.Qe6 Nd8 3.Qf7+ Nxf7 4.Ne6# What a great final position! You have to look for possibilities and then find a way to make them happen giving your opponent little choice. Knowing what you now know, try, from the initial position, to play out all the moves and variations in your head. Do this with every problem you see on this page and you will get better!

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