<once> has a class of his own. Can somebody compile some of his selected pieces and post them in in one place ?! i do not know how to do it.

2...bg4 warning cat of 9.d5 c5! ayes (A41) in chigorin like

M Peek vs Akobian, 2012

Pc3 I deep in h5 f4 a lump re4 drag up isnt it reading e2 god ele

see h4 er bask a chin queenh5+ easy it stem in escry it littled

in feint h4 0l I see in ground at epiphany h5 mop trumble f4

edict in establishment kid you nought without active pieces in

good call it hold in rook+ TN xe5 it hopes in bad bb5 could

When we look at a chess puzzle, sometimes we see <plans> and sometimes we see <moves>.

What do I mean? I think today's POTD is most easily solved if you spot the overall plan. The white king is trapped on the h file and white doesn't have any defensive pieces which can block that file. So any unanswerable rook or queen check on the h file will be mate. So then we look for ways to check on the h file, and that's when we see that the g pawn is overworked. It "prevents" the queen from playing Qh5+ and it "prevents" the rook from Rh4+. Get rid of the g4 pawn with tempo and the game is won.

By contrast, Monday's POTD seemed to appeal more to people who look first at moves. We had a fairly obvious rook sac to examine, even if we didn't know what it would lead to.

Most of us have a natural inclination to one or other of these two types of thinking. You can see that when people write down their thoughts. Some immediately start identifying candidate moves and assessing variations. Others take a while to scan the position and look for features, strengths, weaknesses and plans.

I've noticed that my thinking patterns have changed as I've got older. When I was young I used to dive straight and look at promising moves. I followed rules like "examine every check and capture". I read GMs talking about "the move that the position demands" and I fondly imagined that I had similar levels of experience and insight.

Then I went through a dreamy phase of looking for plans in almost every position.

Now I seem to flip between the two. Sometimes I look at a position and see a move that I really want to get to know better. Other times I will let me eye wander dreamily over the hills and valleys of a position before I get down and dirty with actual moves.

If you found yesterday's POTD easier than today's, it may be that your natural thinking style is to look at specific moves first. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And in many cases it's the fastest way to find a solution.

(Hammer followed it up with 17.Re1.)

But he underestimated 16...Rxe4.