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William Chen vs Kevin Martin McDonald
21st Annual Southern Open U-2100 (2013), Wyndham Resort, Orlando, Fl., rd 4, Jul-28
Sicilian Defense: Alapin Variation. Barmen Defense (B22)  ·  1-0

ANALYSIS [x]

FEN COPIED

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Kibitzer's Corner
< Earlier Kibitzing  · PAGE 2 OF 2 ·  Later Kibitzing>
Sep-10-13  Blunderdome: I got it eventually. Spent a lot of time on Qc4.
Sep-10-13
Premium Chessgames Member
  An Englishman: Good Evening: Black's position is surprisingly bad at move 21. 21...Bd7 runs into 22.Qxb7, and 21...Ra7 runs into 22.Qd4. 21...f5 doesn't seem to blunder away material immediately, but after 22.Qd4 White threatens 23.Qd8+,Qxd8; 24.Rxd8+ and Black Queen side remains paralyzed. Chen deserves some credit here, folks; he played like Capablanca or Rubenstein, and how many of us can make the same claim?
Sep-10-13  SamAtoms1980: 22.Qe5 should turn out the lights on this party. The key to the right square is to strike at the rook behind.
Sep-10-13
Premium Chessgames Member
  al wazir: This wasn't easy at all! I looked at at least five different ideas before I found the win.
Sep-10-13  morfishine: Oh yes, of course <22.Qe5>

(and only arrived at after first exploring 22.Qa4, 22.Qc4, 22.Qd4 & 22.Qh4)

*****
PM: 22.Qf4 is just as effective due to 22...e5 23.Qxe5

*****

Sep-10-13  TheaN: Tuesday 10 September 2013

<22.?>

After yesterday's out of the box thinking and actually missing a variation of the combination that was mate in one, today is a classical example of <reversing> the combo.

The back rank mate should be obvious from the get go. Only the queen defends d8 suggesting that going with the back rank check takes out the defender of something. However, after 22.Rd8+ Qxd8 white has surrended his second to best piece, will not win the opponent's best piece or mate, and will in fact lose.

Striking is that once the pattern is clear, reversing can turn a not working combo into a winning one. What is we take out the defender of d8 first and then mate? At least the interest of the combination is the maximum, it is mate, so it can go to the expense of anything but the own king.

Now it becomes apparent the white queen will facilitate the mating combination, rather than the mating combination facilitating some kind of material gain. The point of a <take-out-the-defender> combination is double threats as just one can be easily parried.

Here is where the Rb8 comes into play: it can be skewered on the Qc7. Two squares allow this, 22.Qf4 but the most direct is:

<22.Qe5> black is already out of resources. Keeping tab on d8 will undefend Rb8, and of course:

<22....Qxe5 23.Rd8# 1-0> is the whole point of our combination. My take home would be, reverse any two-step combination you spot, cause the other way around might work perfectly.

Sep-10-13  bubuli55: 22. Qe5 e i e i o !
Sep-10-13  cyclon: Black only lacks one tempo. 22. Qe5 wins immediately on account of -22. -Q- 23. Qxb8, or -22. -Qxe5 23. Rd8X. Not though 22. Qf4? e5. It's conspicuous that in Chess the finish can become suddenly in most innocent-looking positions AT TIMES. As M. Tal put it; " In Chess 2+2 is not A-L-W-A-Y-S 4 ".
Sep-10-13  cyclon: Even here I had a mistake! 22. Qf4 e5 23. Qxe5 wins as well. -22. -Rb8?? was a serious mistake, maybe -22. -h6 was to be played, or even -f6/-f5.
Sep-10-13  whiteshark: <22.Qe5!>, and that's it.
Sep-10-13  lost in space: dammed, not easy at all.

I checked 22. Qa4, Qc4, Qh5 and even Qxb7, but nothing worked out.

I thought for a while that 22. Qc4 Qb6 23. Qc5 is the solution but after 23...Qxc5 24. Rxd8 Qf8 25. Rxf8 Kxf8 white is busted, not black.

After that I found 22. Qe5

Sep-10-13
Premium Chessgames Member
  Oxspawn: At my (limbo dancing) level of chess, making an escape square for the king seems like such good forward planning. If white can shift the black queen then the rook can mate on d8. So a queen sacrifice looks on – but where? Qc4 does not work as black will simply play Qe7. But what about

22. Qe5 Qe7
23. Qxb8 Qf8
24. Bxb7 and I don’t see any defence for black.
If 23….. Qc5+
24. Kh2 Now black cannot play Qf4+ and has to play g6 or h6 and the bishop goes as well.

Sep-10-13  mistreaver: Tuesday. White to play. Easy. 22?
22 Qe5! 1:0
Sep-10-13  Nick46: Strangely enough I got this without too much trouble, first seeing Qf4 and then finding ahaaa, Qe5 is even better.
Sep-10-13
Premium Chessgames Member
  chrisowen: A fabled queene5 ie bishopf3 aced one c8 link free,

reckon e5 delve try duty flight engage to be bishop,

cuffed good affect read here bus be-queathed it now in do think eg free chip b8 awn hut suxccess in oodles of space queen bishop be juicy bind for I,

suppose eg ment rook he done dutifuls in bishop f3 at,

queen devious be you dents to do bishop frenzy free in eg under the radar a good rook d1 quenched eg one eddy to extricate daftness abound for each insensed curious e4 and queen c7s a flogs pace a fob,

accumulated rook back-done mission I bullseye be at.

22.Qe5 I edifice b8 ogle and queen caged bottled b8.

I see e5 b8 edge pair off bishop chin-down er c7 up,

in cede queen cuffered time line lucky break in b8.

Sep-10-13
Premium Chessgames Member
  kevin86: I saw this one immediately...if the queen takes the queen,mate comes on the back row. But to not take,forces the queen to abandon the rook.
Sep-10-13  bubuli55: < Sep-10-13 bubuli55: 22. Qe5 e i e i o ! >

Silly me. That's O McDonald.

Here's K McDonald.

Sep-10-13  Nullifidian: This was too easy, in that it was so easy that I thought I was missing something. But no.

Either 22. ♕e5 or 22. ♕f4 seem equally good, followed by 22... ♕e7 23. ♕xb8 and now 23... ♙g6 or something like it to give the king some luft. It loses the bishop, but attempting to keep the bishop with either 23... ♕e8 or ♕f8 is worse. White will play 24. ♕c7 ♙g6 25. ♖d8 and the queen will have to be traded for the rook and the bishop is lost anyway.

Sep-10-13  N0B0DY: Yup, thats the plan.
Sep-10-13
Premium Chessgames Member
  Once: White's queen moves from e4 to e5. That's all. Just a leetle step up the board - the mightiest piece emulating the humblest.

And yet this move ends the game. It turns out that the black queen is tied to c7, as the only square where she can guard both b8 and d8. If she moves off the b8-h2 diagonal the Rb8 falls. If she captures the Qe5 then white wins with a back rank mate.

The question has to be this ... how would you play Qe4-e5? Do you pick up the queen with a mighty swagger and slam her down again so that every other piece jumps in the air? Or do you do the patented Dr Evil pinkie-push?

What it a pinkie-push? You take your smallest digit ... no, not that one, this is a family show ... your little finger. Then with the tiniest of prods you gently utch the queen forward, a millimetre at a time. Then you look in your opponent's face and smile enigmatically.

Okay, okay, so maybe "smile enigmatically" is what you think you are doing. The other guy would almost see it as "smirk insufferably". But that it is the nature of the patented Dr Evil pinkie-push. It's got to be slow and it's got to be done with a smile (aka a smirk).

One word of warning before you try to incorporate the pinkie-push in your own games. It only really works if the killer move is one square away. The pinkie-push is not advised for the full eight-squared moves of doom. That does tend to come across as a little too sadistic.

Sep-10-13  MountainMatt: At first I thought moving to any queen-attacks-queen square would be winning, but then I saw that 22. Qe5 is the one, winning the rook next.
Sep-10-13  thegoodanarchist: Ha! Great exploitation of the vulnerable back rank. Bravo, Billy Chen!
Sep-10-13
Premium Chessgames Member
  gawain: Yes! 22 Qe5. Nice
Sep-10-13  bubuli55: On a less dramatic winning continuation ...

22. Qd4 g6 23. Qd8+ Qxd8 24. Rxd8+ Kg7

Sep-10-13  jrbleau: Oh, Once, now you've got to write that compilation, diagrams included. I'll buy a signed copy!
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