Beware of Masked Bishops and Discovered Attacks!

November 8, 2020

In chess, a discovered attack happens when you make a move that opens a path for another of your pieces to take an opponent’s piece. It works best when the piece you moved also attacks another of the opponent’s pieces or checks the King.

In a recent game, I was rather fortunate in being able to turn a less-than-ideal Bishop move into a discovered attack on my opponent’s Knight. My opponent did not notice the threat the lurking Bishop posed until it captured his hanging Knight. 🙂 This is a useful tactic to know and it can be especially effective in casual games, pub chess, or games played in a casual environment. It is not uncommon for casual players to miss unmasked threats on the diagonals!

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Another Look at the Maróczy Defence Pawn Grab!

September 13, 2020

In the last game I played as Black against my regular opponent, he opened with 1. e4 and I replied with my repertoire move, 1… d6. A few moves later we found ourselves with a situation that seemed familiar!

  1. e4 d6
  2. d4 Nf3
  3. Nc3 e5

We arrive at the Maróczy Defence by transposition. (The pure Maróczy Defence is 1. e4 d6, 2. d4 e5…)

Next, my opponent decided to advance his Queen’s pawn, which the Chess.com engine rates as “good,” which really means just “okay.” Clearly, the chess engine prefers to exchange pawns, which often leads to an early exchange of queens (4. dxe5 dxe5, 5. Qxd8+ Kxd8).

I responded with 4… Be7 and realized that if my opponent were to play 5. Bg5 the “Maróczy Defence Pawn Grab” (as I call it) would be in play…

Back in April I completely missed the opportunity (see my previous blog post and video) when the exact same situation occurred. This time around, my opponent had completely forgotten about that game and conveniently played 5. Bg5? again, just as he did in April!

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Don’t Miss This Chance To Grab White’s d5 Pawn in the Modern Defence…

April 26, 2020

I wheeled out the good old Modern 1… d6 Defence to 1.e4 in this game against my regular opponent, but I missed a great opportunity in the fifth move to claim an advantage with 5… Nxd5!

Here are the opening moves:

1. e4 d6 2. d4 e5 3. d5 Nf6 4. Bg5 Be7 5. Nc3 Nxd5!

This sequence is a variation of the Pirc Defence known as the Maróczy Defence, which brings out Black’s central pawns in the first two moves, delaying Nf6.

The “easy chess tip” in this game is easy to learn but not so easy for a casual player to spot if unaware of it.

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Don’t Forget En Passant!

November 10, 2019

The en passant chess move is a pawn capture that can only happen immediately after a pawn makes a move of two squares from its starting square and lands on the same file as an adjacent enemy pawn.

The adjacent enemy pawn may immediately capture the pawn as if the pawn had only moved one square forward.

En Passant Giphy

Here’s a video I made about a situation that arose in a chess game between two unrated amateurs in which the en passant chess move could have preserved White’s advantage had he used it…

Video: Don’t Forget En Passant!

(NOTE: I forgot to remove Black’s h8 Rook from the analysis board in the video! It should not be there. The illustrations below show the correct set up for this situation.)

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Hiroshima Open Chess Tournament 2019: Round 1, Garcia v Hurley

September 23, 2019

I’m competing as an unrated player in the Hiroshima Open Chess Tournament, a round-robin consisting of seven games, brought to us by the Osaka Abeno Chess Club.

They hold an open competition in a different Japanese city every year, and this year, 2019, they decided to hold it in Hiroshima, which is very convenient as that is where I happen to live!

The event took place over the long weekend of September 21st-23rd 2019 at Aster Plaza, about ten minutes’ walk south from Peace Park.

As an unrated player I was not sure what to expect, or how many people would be competing, but my goal was to avoid bottom place at all costs!

I was the first person to arrive, and apart from a notice on a TV monitor confirming that the event was taking place, there was no sign that a chess competition was about to take place. Then, about ten minutes before the doors officially opened, a small group of chess players began to straggle in. It turned out that there were just fourteen of us, including two players from the Hiroshima Chess Circle. There were eleven players from Osaka, ten of whom were Japanese men and the eleventh a Filipina woman called Melody.

At 1:20pm the first round got under way…

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