| Mar-29-14 | | Castleinthesky: All the riches, but none of the gold. |
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Mar-29-14
 | | offramp: White gave away a huge amount of material following his faulty e5 move. He must have been very relieved when his one mobile bishop, assisted by two minor colleagues, found a perpetual check. Three minor pieces against a full black army! |
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Mar-29-14
 | | Phony Benoni: Now that made me laugh. It also reminded me of this endgame study:
click for larger viewComposed by F. M. Simkovitsch, this is #132 in Irving Chernev's "Chessboard Magic". White to play and draw. <1.Bf7+ Kd7 2.Be6+ Kd6 3.Bf4+ Kc5 4.Be3+ Kb4 5.Bd2+ Ka3> A temporary refuge at last, so White prepares to continue checking. <6.Kb1! Qxa8!>
click for larger viewNot so much to win material as to gain a refuge for the king. If White starts checking, we get 7.Bc1+ Kb4 8.Bd2+ Kc5 9.Be3+ Kd6 10.Bf4+ Ke7 11.Bg5+ Ke8 12.Bf7+ Kd7 13.Be6+ Kc7, and Black escapes via the b7 square. But if White doesn't check, there's nothing left to do. So White does it! <7.Ka1!!>
The point is that White just keeps moving his king between a1 and b1 as long as the Black queen moves around the a8-b7-a6 triangle. If she goes to a dark square, White starts checking and will either win the queen or achieve a perpetual check. Any bishop move blocks the king's backward flight and allows a perpetual check, and playing ...b4 at any time allows Bc1#. It's a draw! Chernev records that Isaac Kashdan remarked, "I still don't believe it!" |
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Mar-29-14
 | | An Englishman: Good Evening: OK, I feel reasonably astounded. Anyone else? When I see a shocker like this game, I can't help but wonder if the players worked out the moves beforehand. |
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Mar-29-14
 | | al wazir: What happens after 17. h3+ Qxh3 (17...Kh5 18. g4#) 18. gxh3+ Kxh3 (18...Kh5 19. Ne2, with 20. Ng3# to follow) 19. Bf5+ Kh2 20. Bh4 ? The threat is 21. Bg3+ Kh1 22. Be4#. Black can try 20....Nc5 (20...Nxe5 21. Bg3+ Kh2 22. Be4+ Nf3 23. Bxf3#) 21. Bg3+ Kh1 22. Be4+ Nxe4 23. Nxe4, and now 24. Ng3# looks unstoppable. Am I missing something? |
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| Mar-29-14 | | morfishine: <al wazir> after 21.Bg3+ Kh1 22.Be4+ Nxe4+ 23.Nxe4 White cannot play 24.Ng3# since his Bishop is on <g3>; but this continuation should be looked at more in depth, very good! I've tried a few continuations, but nothing ironed out yet |
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| Mar-29-14 | | mrsaturdaypants: If 17 h3+ Qxh3 18 gxh3, then simply Kf5 and white has nothing better than the same perpetual as before. (I had to stare at this for a while to see that black's king didn't have to take on h3.) |
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| Mar-29-14 | | Sho: What fun! Ten cheeky ways of saying "check." |
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| Mar-29-14 | | mrknightly: I think a better pun, more in line with the game, would have been, "Ingvar a penny, ingvar a pound." |
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| Mar-29-14 | | TheTamale: <mrknightly> Yes, better and more appropriate than the one used. |
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| Mar-29-14 | | kevin86: The game reminds me of the immortal draw. Maybe this can be a sequel to that one- the jury is out. |
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| Mar-29-14 | | mrknightly: <TheTamale> Thanks. By the way, love your handle. Any particular reason for using it? However, you know the singular is "tamal," not "tamale." "Tamale" is an American back formation from the plural, "tamales." |
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Mar-29-14
| | al wazir: <morfishine: White cannot play 24.Ng3# since his Bishop is on <g3>>. Yeah, I realized that after it was too late to delete. Thanks. |
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| Mar-31-14 | | TheTamale: <mrknightly> Did not know that about tamales, although it makes perfect sense. I just used it as a Yahoo handle many years ago, trying for something stupid, and I liked it enough that I used it here and on Sherdog (MMA site) as well. |
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Kibitzing
