T Van Scheltinga vs Stahlberg, 1950 (39...?)

Black to play and win.

Material: N+P for B. The White Kh1 has 2 legal moves and is secured from check. The White Bd5 pins Ne6 to Kg8, while Re5 pins Ne6 to Qe7. The White Bd5 guards the a8-h1 diagonal leading to Kh1, however, suggesting replacement of the guard Bd5 with a more vulnerable defender.

Candidates (39...): Rxd5

22…Rxd5 23.Rxd5 [else, drop a B]

23…Qb7 (threatening 24…Qxd5+)

24.Qg2 [Qa5 Nc7 wins Rd5]

(Note: in the variation, 24…Nc7 is much better than its dual, 24…Nf5, because it restricts checks by Qa5.)

24…Nf4 (forking Rd5 and Qg2, and winning Rd5)

Tactical theme: Pin

After 39.Bd5? the knight is en prise but my chess vision is aiming for

39...Rxd5! putting white in a state of shock.

40.Rxd5 Qb7!

At this point white could resign.

The rook could not be saved e.g. 41.Qg2 Qb1+ (41...Nf4? Rd8+)

42.Qg1 Qe4+

43.Qg2 Qxg2+!

44.Kxg2 Nf4+ and the rook falls or 41.Qa5 Nc7 (Not 41...Nf4 because of 42.Qa8+)

Corrections are very much appreciated.

Let's see how this game goes.

The black d-pawn looks to take a pretty powerful role after 39...Qf6.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.

To improve your board vision, just keep doing the puzzles without a board. Once your board vision is good enough, try to write down your variations systematically. There are usually a few variations on Tuesday, to begin.

<39....?>

Target: 2:10;000
Taken: in total a bit more

Material: Black up, ♙+♘ / ♗

Candidates: <[Rxd5]>

-ML-
The strong Bishop on d5, neutralizing all pieces and threatening to win the Knight on e6 suggest only one move:

<39....Rxd5> and as such does not deserve a !. However, what's the verdict?

<40.Rxd5> I don't really see any point in letting Black keep the Rook.

<40....Qb7> now the fun starts. Black pins the Rook on d5, where the Bishop was not to be pinned. White has to defend his Rook in order to keep the material advantage or equality. The Knight that was so powerless becomes the strongest piece on the board with the Bishop gone, he defends d4 to begin with. So White has two options. The seemingly most logical one, breaking the pin and setting up a discovered attack, fails to a nice forking combination.

/A\
<41.Qg2 Qb1†> take note that trying to double attack the Rook with Nc7 or Nf4 fails on the account of 42.Rd8†, the move Nf4 will prove to be important though.

<42.Qg1 Qe4† 43.Qg2> the same position, now with the Black Queen behind the Rook due to a hook maneuver. This allows the forking trade:

<43....Qxg2† 44.Kxg2 Nf4† > winning the Rook and the game. So, White should defend outside the pin and has only one other option.

/B\
<41.Qa5> this stumped me for a while. The combination in A does not work here. However, because there is no discovered attack, Black is free to attack the Rook twice. Trying to win by a fork does not work here: 41....Qb1†? 42.Kg2 Nf4† 43.Kf3 Nxd5 44.Qd8†= probably draws. How does Black make the double attack?

<41....Nc7> denies White access to d8 from a5. This threatens the simple 42....Qxd5† winning the Rook going up the Knight, with a Queen trade. White can only prevent this by moving Queen or King. As moving the Queen still allows Qxd5† with Queens still on the board:

<42.Kg1> seems way more logical. The Black Queen cannot leave the Knight's defense, so Black is forced now to play:

<42....Nxd5> but any counterattack is just artificial.

Many long combinations are actually a number of quite short and easy tactics one after the other. In today's puzzle, especially the longer line which never happened, white doesn't do anything fancy. Just pins, checks, captures and a fork at the end.

The difficult bit is visualising what the board looks like after each bit of the sequence. Try this:

click for larger view

Here's our starting position. Notice how white controls the long diagonal from a8 to h1 and also pins the Ne6. Now visualise the rest of the moves without playing them. Don't worry about thinking of moves for yourself - this is just a visualisation exercise.

39...Rxd5 40. Rxd5

You need to be able to "see" the resulting position. The black rook and white bishop have disappeared and the white rook is now sitting at d5. In your imagination, you ought to be able to see which squares the rook can hit, and the fact that it is sitting on the same long diagonal as the king.

40...Qb7 41. Qb2

A new position to visualise. All the pieces except the black knight and king are now on the long diagonal. Again, when you've fixed that picture in your mind, try to look at what each piece can do.

41...Qb1+ 42. Qg1

Again, we need to be able to picture this clearly. Now we have a line of black queen, white queen and white king on the first rank. That doomed rook is still sitting at d5. If you lose the picture in your mind and have to rewind, don't worry. Try to build the picture until you are happy with it.

42...Qe4+ 43. Qg2

We are back to the long diagonal again, but now the black queen is on the other side of the rook. Can you see the line of pieces from d5, e4, g1 to h1?

43...Qxg2+ 44. Kxg2

This one should be a little easier. As pieces disappear from the board the remaining pieces are (usually) easier to place. The white rook is still on d5, the white king is now on g2 and the only other piece we need to worry about is the Ne6, which hasn't moved the whole combination.

45...Nf4+

Even when you know the moves of a combination, it is still worth playing them out in your head to improve visualisation. In fact, it is probably better to practice visualisation this way, as you don't have to worry about thinking up moves for yourself.

However, even if it is a draw, two things in White's favor are:

1. 39. Qe1! is in no danger of losing. So it is an improvement.

2. 39. Qe1! gives White a lot of winning chances, as potential drawing moves are difficult for Black to find.