Editor's Note: We apologize for any technical difficulties you may experience with getting the puzzle images to display properly. This is a site-wide problem and we are working hard to fix it. Stay tuned!This position is from Giri-Aronian, 2012. Aronian’s winning move here is a beautiful example of what we have talked about here quite often. Let’s go through Black’s thoughts here. His bishop and c-pawn have all of White’s 2nd rank squares in front of the king covered. A queen check on f4 is available, but the knight could take it. If only the rook on e8 could then go to e1 to mate White, but there’s a rook on h1 covering that. If that rook were on e1, then the queen check would work…hmmm.

Solution:

Aronian came up with, if you think about what we went through above, a very logical move, but you rarely see a move like this in chess. The knight sacrifices itself on an empty square! The threat with Ne1 is Nd3+, which causes White all sorts of problems so….1...Ne1 2.Rxe1 [More fight came with 2.Rh3 Qxf2 3.Nxc3 Qf4+ 4.Rd2 g4 5.Nxd5 Qf1 6.Ne7+ Rxe7 7.Qxe7 Nd3+ 8.Kc2 Qxh3 9.Qe6+ Kh7 10.Qc8 (the queen has to hide from the coming discovered check) 10… Nc5+, but it’s a forced mate from here as well.] 2...Qf4+ 3.Kd1 [3.Nxf4 Rxe1#] 3...Qe4 White Resigned as the checks on b1 and d3 can’t both be covered.

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