Interesting Position

Here is the final position from a blitz game I just played on lichess.org

My opponent had 20.6 seconds left but flagged in this position.

What’s interesting about it is that it looked to me like White should be easily winning.  After all, he should be able to pick up my b pawn pretty much any time he likes.  Then doesn’t the a pawn just race down the board?

Well…not so fast.  Rudimentary analysis shows that after 44.Kf3 (or other squares) I can just play 44…Rxg2 and the rook can’t be taken as my bishop would fork on e4.

This means that I should also win the h pawn as well.

There is a lot of counterplay in this position.  So again, it’s quite important to look at these games, even if only for a few seconds, after you win them.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

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