TOURNAMENTS
State Championship Tournament this weekend - 7 games in two days.April 20-21 at Robbinsdale Middle School
LESSONS
Pins for the inexperienced players and difficult and surprising moves for the advanced players.
Solutions to a couple of the more complicated problems will be posted here tomorrow.
PINS Worksheet problem 7. As we study the position, we notice. that we are down a pawn, but the black knight is pinned to the rook. We would like to attack the knight again, but we see that black has two good replies. He could take our knight and give up his rook because he can play Nf3 forking our rooks thus gaining back the lost material. Or he could simply play Rxd1+ which wiggles out of the pin with no cost.
So the correct move is 1. Rxd8+ Rxd8 2. Ne4 Nxe4 3. Bxd8 Nxf2 4. Rf1 Ne4 5.Bxc7 and when the dust settles we have a B, a R, and 5 pawns, Black has a B, a N, and 6 pawns
Pins Problem 8
The knight in c3 is not well-protected and is on the same diagonal at the King. 1. Ba4 pins the knight! 1. ... Qd7 is met with 2. Nd4 or if Black tries 1. ...Bd7 2. Qxd5 forking the knights.
Problem #4 from the Surprise! worksheetIn a position like the one below, nothing obvious jumps out, but we know we have several advantages - a pawn on the 7th rank, two other pawns, we have access to the black king. We look at forcing moves - mainly checks. 1) Rf8+ RxR 2) Qh7+!! (Access to the king and a forcing move. It's actually easy to see that the queen cannot be taken because we can take the rook with the pawn promoting it to a knight which forks the king and the queen leaving black with no pieces.) 2) ... Kf7 3) g8(Q) with double check! Black has 2 choices 3.... Ke8 which loses almost immediately to Qxe6, or 3. ... Kf6 4. Qhg6+ then 5. Qxe6+ Kxe6 6. Qxf8 with an easy win.
RATINGS
| Cavan | 962 |
| Q | 778 |
| Simon | 738 |
| Thomas | 553 |
| Alex R. | 488 |
| Reyka | 201 |
| Jannick | 173 |
| Alex O. | 170 |
| Jad | 161 |
| Soren | 160
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