A Puzzle And A Simaginfan Chain Of Thought
Afternoon everyone. Another bit of self-indulgence today .My regular hardy band of readers will know how my head works. One chess idea leads to a stream of games jumping into my head.
This week a friend of mine posted a game where I spotted a nice combination. It's a nice puzzle - simple and difficult at the same time!! You have to spot an intermediate move and a retreat, so have fun with it!!
Well, sacrifices on KR6 as we used to call it - h3 and h6 in the modern world - are not exactly rare. There was one played at the top level just this week! A couple of old examples came into my head instantly.
One caused quite a stir at the time - beautiful game. you can find some modern analysis here :-
Well, I wonder what Bondarevsky
would think of the modern world, where his masterpiece gets questioned by the perfect defence of the silicon beast!!
The second game which popped into my head was won by one of my very favourite players - the wonderful Milan Vidmar. I have done a number of blogs on him if you take the time to go look for them.
A rather wonderful game to study. Vidmar through and through. Fine positional player, chess fighter and a wonderful chessboard opportunist. I first studied it without notes, on a real board, trying to understand it and not really managing to do so!!
Julius Perlis.
was a fine player, who's life was tragically cut short by a mountaineering accident. He could play! The first two games of his that I think of are a loss to Lasker and this fascinating win against Alekhine.
A picture link into the next game.
In the very first round of that tournament the young Alekhine played a pseudo-sacrifice on KR6 against Vidmar. I will let you study this one for yourselves, or you can look up Alekhine's own notes - it is one of the very first games in his 'My Best Games' books.
Well, I could write a whole blog on the games between Alekhine and Vidmar. For those who have not seen it before I will finish this chain of thought with this one. the notes are by Vidmar, and are truly a joy to go through. I hope you have enjoyed this little journey into the way the chess side of my brain works!! Take care everyone.
