White to Play
Published in Chess Puzzles
This week we will devote ourselves to one of the elements we talked about earlier: the knight fork. The move of the knight engenders all sorts of cute surprises for the unwary defender. See if you can see the all the surprises here.
Solution:
1.Nc7+ Ke7 [ Black tries to avoid White winning the exchange (rook for knight) with an easy win (which is a good lesson in itself): 1...Rxc7 2.Rxd8+ Ke7 3.a6 Ra7 4.Rc8 Bd6 5.Rc6 Be5 6.Rb6 Ke8 7.Kf3 g5 8.Ke4 g6 9.Rdb1 Ra8 10.Rc6 Kd7 11.Kd5 Ke8 12.Rb7 Rd8+ 13.Kc5 Kf8 14.a7 g4 15.Rxf6+ Bxf6 16.Rb8 and the pawn queens.] 2.Rxd8 Rxd8 3.Rxd8 Kxd8 4.Ne6+ Kd7 5.Nxc5+ Kc6 6.a6 That little knight check at the end of all the exchanges wins the game. So you have the two things we talked about before: look at all checks and captures and forced moves; use the elements of the game to implement that thought process. The knight fork is one of the key tactical elements of chess.
Send questions and comments to PTamburro@aol.com.
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