Play online chess!

From	Message
apatzer 08-Dec-16, 11:09	Hindsight is always 20/20 A tactic missed! Lower rated players (such as myself) are often plagued with the compulsion to automatically capture, or recapture. To help overcome this (in my own games) I long ago put allot of effort into studying and understanding Zwischenzug's Zwischenzug simple definition. The zwischenzug is a chess tactic in which a player, instead of playing the expected move (commonly a recapture of the capturer of a piece that the opponent has just captured) first interposes another move, posing an immediate threat that the opponent must answer, then plays the expected move. Diagram taken from one of our resent team games. Altho the move to win here, does not exactly qualify as a Zischenzug it reminds me of one. On the previous move Black blundered by moving his King to d5! White to play and win... 1. c4+! wins by Removing the defender! the game continued... 46. Rxe6 Kxe6 ... White resigns Imho... Premature resignation! White foresaw Blacks ability to create an outside passed pawn on the a file, if he tries to stop the g pawn from queening directly. Final position... No one wants to needlessly continue in a lost position ( except the people I play lol) However the final position is not without tricks... I.E. Allowing your opponent the chance to go wrong! I would have played 47. Kc5 Why?? I am not criticizing anyone's play, we can all only do our best. I just thought this position would be instructive. In endgames we really need to calculate all variations to the end. In 99.9% of all endgames, the position is either Won, Lost or Drawn. Concepts like I'm objectively better go out the window. More often than not there is only one winning move in the position. After 47. Kc5 if black makes one mistake do to overconfidence White can force a draw or even win. Just food for thought.
apatzer 11-Dec-16, 05:45	Resigning when your winning. It can happen to anyone. A good Grand master once resigned against Kortchnoi when his position was won. Why does this happen? Well sometimes we trust our opponent too much and others we simply overlook an obvious move because we have assumed we are doomed! Two examples taken from our recent team games. dig 1) White just played 52. c6 and Black resigned because he assumed the pawn can not be stopped! 52 ... Nxd4 53. c7 Nf5+ and black is winning dig 2) Black just played 43 ... Ra5+ and White resigned because he assumed he looses his rook. 44. Bf5! and white wins This is by no means a criticism of anyone's play. it is however a good learning opportunity for us all. Things we can all do to help avoid resigning in a won position. 1)Know that, Assumption is the mother of all screw up's. 2)Never trust your opponent!. 3) If you get that I am doomed feeling, let the game sit for a day and come back to it with fresh eyes. 4) Flip the board around and analyze it from your opponents perspective
apatzer 11-Dec-16, 06:23	I was wrong! in (diagram 1) White only looses if he plays 53. c7? 53. Ke4 holds the draw. My foot goes in my mouth for assuming lol and here we go, there was only one move for white to draw the position! Everything had to be calculated to the end. Endgame principles 101!

GameKnot: play chess online, monthly chess tournaments, chess clubs, Internet chess league, chess teams, online chess puzzles, free online chess games database and more.