Monday, July 14, 2008

Miss Easy Tactics! with Justin X

[Our pedagogical series in which we look at a portion of a game I played the previous week in which some obvious tactic is overlooked. Readers are invited to practice their skill by seeing if they can spot what was missed.]


Horton v Bruned (FM, 2383). Benasque Open 2008, round five, position after White's move 34.Ba3-b2.

Play now proceeds 34...e4 35.Nxe4 Nxe4 and Black offers a draw.

Should White accept?



Miss Easy Tactics! index

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes. 36.Bxe4 Nf4! is rather embarrassing if he doesn't.

(37.Bc2 Qh3 38.Qxc6 Ne2+ 39.Kh1 Qf1#, or 37.gxf4 Qd1+ 38.Kg2 Bxe4+ 39.Kg3 Qf3+ 40.Kh4 Qxf4+ 41.Kh3 Qf3+ 42.Kh4 g5#)

ejh said...

Quite.

Though not, perhaps quite as embarrassing as it was for the poor bloke playing Black, who offered the draw and then had his kibitzing mate point out the winning move the moment I (completely oblivious to the possibility, as per usual) accepted.

I'm better in the diagram position: this may give a false picture of the game itself, in which I was losing or very close to losing for the best part of three hours. The other chap didn't fancy a post-mortem and I don't blame him one bit.

Glenn Wilson said...

FWIW, I totally missed Nf4! Then, I thought that Bc2 defended adequately. Obviously, it doesn't.

Nice shot!