A Fascinating Position

Here is a position from my game Thursday night.  I am White and it’s my move.

So here I see this tactical idea and I calculate 10.Bxf6 Qxf6 11.Nxd5 cxd5 12.Qxd5 and now the rook on c8 is lost unless Black gives up the knight with 12…Nc6.  I now realize that after 13.Qxc6 my queen and Black’s queen are both on the sixth rank and – oh no – 13…Bb4+ unleashes a discovered attack on my queen would cost me the game.

So I make a different move then I realize that I missed a key aspect of the position, which is that my thirteenth move is not 13.Qxc6, but 13.Qxc6+

Since this would also pick off the rook this tells me at the time that clearly this was the way to play and that I missed something major.

So I spend the next few moves of the game annoyed for missing something “obvious” in the position.  Fast forward to today.  I start looking at the position again and something just doesn’t look quite right.

I start moving pieces around and something just isn’t adding up, but I can’t quite find it.  As I had just read a piece by Jacob Aagaard explaining that if you’re going to use an engine you need to use it in such a manner as to let yourself discover the reason certain moves are good or bad rather than just the fact that they are good or bad I turn on the engine after Black’s ninth move …b6, which gives us the position we first looked at:

The engine is insisting that this position is equal.  “Well, OK” I think…”10…Qxf6 isn’t forced.  After all, Black can play 10…gxf6.”

Nope, that position the engine shows as much better for White.  So I follow the line closely until we get to this position:

Here Black has an amazing trap in the position.  First he plays 12…0-0, then after 13.Qxa8 Nc6 14.Qb7 Rb8 the engine is screaming that 15.Qxc6 is the least bad of the options although Black will pick up the Queen after 15…Bb4+ 16.Qc3 Bxc3+ 17.bxc3:

Here White is up the equivalent of a pawn, but Black’s position is so much better than the computer shows the position to be about -1.2 in Black’s favor.

“Yeah, but why is 15.Qxc6 considered best?” I ask myself.  After all, White can save the queen with 15.Qa6.  Now we reach the most critical part of the position, this:

Black now slams shut the jaws of their trap with 15…Nb4.  Not only does this threaten the queen on a6, but at the same time it also threatens the fork 16…Nc2+

So all in all an amazing position which teaches the analyst to always keep looking for resources.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott