John Bryant's Tactics

Bryant - Shen, Round One
White to play

Bryant - Sturt, Round Three
White to play

Bryant - Ding, Round Four
White to play

Troff - Bryant, Round Seven
Black to play

Bryant - Naroditsky, Round Eight
White to play

I have posted tactical puzzles from the games of FM John Bryant from the recent 2011 US Junior Championship in Saint Louis.  Though he finished 7th out of 10, Bryant's games were always tactically interesting, and it is telling that he was one of the only players with no draws (5 wins and 4 losses).  Bryant's swashbuckling attacking play was not always sound, but it produced some very nice finishes, represented above.  Most of the puzzles are fairly easy, except for the last which requires some judgment of the resulting ending.  More about the championship, won by Andrew Young (who finished two points ahead of the field), can be found online:

• Official site and crosstable
• Young Winner at US Junior
• Young Clinches US Junior Championship in St Louis
• Bay Area Showdown in St Louis

Learning to Sense Danger at the Amateur Teams

Goeller - Williams, White to play
Should White play 25.Bxb6 or 25.Rxb6?

Goeller - Lima, White to play
Should White play 21.g4 or some other move?

Kopec - Goeller, Black to move
Black wants to play Bxf3 and dxc4, but in what order?

I have annotated three of my more interesting games in a piece titled "Learning to Take My Opponent's Threats Seriously at the 2011 World Amateur Teams."  That sums up the big lesson I needed to learn from my games, and the three diagrams above show the crucial position from each game where I went wrong because I did not think carefully enough about my opponent's threats.  I did see the threats and sensed the danger.  I just did not take those threats seriously.  Fortunately, I was able to get a draw in two of the games.  And I managed a 50% score on Board One for our team, so I'm pretty happy with how things went overall.


I will be posting some more games and stories from the recently concluded World Amateur Team tournament soon.

Imagination in Chess

Krasenkow - Swiercz, Warsaw 2010

White to play and win.

Dennis Monokroussos draws our attention to the problem-like finish of the game Krasenkow - Swiercz, Polish Championship, Warsaw 2010 (java replay or PGN).  Having been challenging myself of late with Paata Gaprindashvili's Imagination in Chess (a superb collection of 756 puzzles designed to improve your chess thinking), I naturally thought the critical position from the game (see diagram above) would be a great way to test your ability to discover hidden resources or "auxiliary ideas."  Try it with 15 minutes on the clock.

Calculation Puzzle

Black to Play and Win

Looking through Chess Review from 1956, I came across the forgotten amateur game Collins - Rankis, New York State Championship 1956 (PGN here). In the position above, Black is up a pawn and can eventually win by many means, but the puzzle really asks you to find Black's most stunning, artistic, and forceful method.

Jennifer Shahade on Tactics Books

Many improving players have made a New Year's resolution to study tactics. In her latest blog post, WGM Jennifer Shahade offers a fine list of books to help you do that.

Najdorf - Szapiro, Lodz 1928

Najdorf - Szapiro, Lodz 1928
White to play.

Someone sent me the score to the little known gem Najdorf - Szapiro, Lodz 1928, which I will have to add to my collection of Bishop and Rook mates:

• Mating Patterns: Bishop and Rook (also in PDF and Java Replay)
• More Bishop and Rook Mates (Java Replay here)

First American Chess Congress, October 1857

GM Andy Soltis's ever-excellent Chess to Enjoy column in this month's Chess Life and Chess Life Online reminded me that the First American Chess Congress began 150 years ago this week in New York on October 6, 1857. You can find his column online, along with the puzzles section that features six selections from the tournament. You might also like my own "Puzzles from New York 1857" along with the selected games from which the puzzle positions come.

I would like to take a moment to compliment the editors of Chess Life for producing one of the best issues I have seen (not to mention the sexiest-ever chess magazine cover photo!) and for putting all of this excellent content online for the entire chess community to enjoy. Bravo!

Vadim Zvjaginsev

Zvjaginsev-Wojtkiewicz


Cifuentes-Parada -- Zvjaginsev


Malakhov - Zvjaginsev

I listened to John Watson's excellent ICC radio show last night, where he gave a favorable review to Jan Timman's On the Attack, a collection of great attacking games. The first game that he examined was Cifuentes-Parada--Zvjaginsev, Wijk aan Zee 1995, which is a beautiful game, featuring both a queen sac and a king hunt. I recognized Vadim Zvjaginsev as the originator of the controversial opening 1.e4 c5 2.Na3!? but was unfamiliar with him as a player, so I naturally checked out his games at Chessgames.com. Some of his best have been collected there in a piece titled "Z is for Zvjaginsev." More puzzles from his games can be found at Chess Puzzles by GMs. If you solve the ones above, I think you'll want to learn more about this Russian GM born August 18, 1976.

Tango Tactics

Sherer - Goeller
Spiller-Orlov
Allies-Alekhine
Schwarman-Orlov

I have posted some games featuring "Tango Tactics" arising out of the Black Knights Tango and related lines (including the Zurich Variation of the Nimzo-Indian). They make an excellent study aid for anyone trying to learn this line. You can also download the positions as a PDF file to print out and carry with you. In the positions above it is always Black to play and win, of course, by the quickest way possible. Additional games and puzzles are included in the links. For more info on the Tango, check out my 1...Nc6 bibliography.

More Bishop and Rook Mates

White to play and force mate (6).


White to play and win (6).

After my recent discussion of the Bishop and Rook Mating Pattern, Tom Chivers (who writes the excellent Streatham & Brixton CC blog) commented: "I've been getting stumped by so many strange and wonderful puzzles and studies recently, it's great to go back to some child's play!" So, for Tom, we are going to have to take it up a notch....

The last puzzles were three-movers (more or less). The wins in the two diagrams above are about six moves deep. Solutions to these puzzles plus a dozen more games with the same theme can be found in Mating Patterns: More Bishop and Rook Mates, which I've recently posted at the Kenilworth Chess Club website.

The Bishop and Rook theme is a favorite of mine, and in compiling these games I remembered one of my own favorites with the theme. I annotated it online several years back as part of my Urusov Gambit website: Goeller - Hall, Hillside 1980.

I hope I have time to compile more of these game and puzzle sets. I think they are very useful for teaching these important patterns, since they show how they arise in the course of play. Those interested in finding more game sets along these lines should explore the wonderful Game Collections at Chessgames.com, including the ones on Boden's Mate (a.k.a. The Bishops Cross Mate) and Mating Patterns. And then there is always Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess, which offers loads of examples of the back rank mating theme....

Mating Patterns: Bishop and Rook

Onderka - Amateur, Austria 1913
White to play and mate in three.

Duras - Olland, Carlsbad 1907 (variation)
White to play and mate in three.

I put together a handout (in Word and PDF) for my chess students to teach them the Bishop and Rook mating pattern. For the "solutions," I have posted a java replay page that includes the games from which the puzzles were drawn, along with several other games featuring the same motif. Our discussion of this pattern fit well with showing them "The Chess Instructor's Favorite Game": Morphy vs. the Count and Duke, Paris 1858.

After putting together the file of games (which is based on articles by Walter Korn from Chess Review 1961), I did some database searches and compiled an original file on the same theme. I will post that one and several other handouts on other motifs as my lessons continue.