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Zugzwang tactic

January 23, 2013

Hikaru Nakamura played a wonderful tactic today at Wijk aan Zee. I couldn’t see how it worked at the time, and had to save the diagram, to study it later. It took me a good minute or so to see what his idea was, and I would never have played (imagine the position before, with black pawns on g5 and h4, and a white pawn on h3) 1…g4!! 2 hg h3!!

Nakamura

Simply superb imagination.

Question: how does black proceed after 3 gh? (note: answer below)

Caruana declined to take, playing 3 Rd1 Rf8 4 Kd3 h2 5 Rh1 Bg1, and with the rook imprisoned, it was soon over.

Answer: 3 gh Rf8 4 Kd3 Rf4! (zugzwang) threatening Be4+, to which there is no good reply. Beautiful.

From → Chess

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