This is an old, but very illustrative game that shows how to take care of a development advantage and some mistakes of your opponent.

In the next lesson we are going to create a passed pawn.

Deflection is a tactic that forces a piece of your opponent to leave the square, row or file where it has to remain, because it is needed there to defend something. This chess term is rather similar to luring, but in luring a piece has to be positioned at the right square to enable an attack while in deflection there is a (double) attack, but the defender has to be moved away in order to be successful.
Trying to promote can be seen as a kind of attack.

The following diagram is a nice example of deflection.



White threatens to promote the pawn, but then Black’s rook will capture the queened piece. Even worse: Black is also threatening to capture the pawn.
Happily for White he is able to play 53. Rg5 which prevents that the pawn can be captured (An absolute pin) and Blacks best move will be 53…Rxg5 after which Black will be able to promote 54. d8=Q.

If Black reacts to 53.Rg5 with the move 53…Kc6 then the next moves are 54.Rxd5 Kxd5 55.d8=Q+ wih an easy win for White (See mating with the queen).

In the next lesson we are going to storm the castle.

In one of the previous lessons we have learned about the double attack. But sometimes your opponent will be not so cooperative that he is positioning his pieces in such a way that you are able to attack two pieces at the same time.

With a supporting Knight on c7, d6, f6 or g7 instead of on g4 White should be able to make a successful double attack with the move Re8+. While looking at the position of this diagram and realizing that White is also able to attack both the King and the Queen at the same time if the Queen can be lured to e8 it becomes rather clear what’s the right move for White.

Like the double attack can be seen as a capture in two, this kind of luring can be seen as a double attack in two.

During the previous lessons we have created some opening reports as well as an opening analysis of the Lolli attack. We have done this while learning how to use a chess database in general and ChessDB in particular. But by creating this opening analysis we are looking for the good games, in fact almost always ignoring the bad games. And these games contain a lot of chess lessons to be learned, especially when these are you own games. But even when you know the right moves it has to be interesting to know why. In other words to know why the other moves are bad.

For example when we look at the opening report of the Lolli attack we notice that Black succeeded in winning eight of the games and by now we now that White must have done something wrong during these games.

The exercise of this lesson is to figure out why White lost the game for each of these eight games.

As an example I have added some annotations to one of these games (the game Jacko, Tomas – Smistik, Milan) leaving you with seven games to annotate by yourself.


Next chess lesson is about Luring.

This lesson has been published before on chessteacherlessons.com, but has been added by the original author to this site after the domain name has expired.

This purpose of this post is to show you the result of the opening’s analysis of our previous lesson. This is one of the reasons that all the moves are taken from the ICOfY database instead of my own database.

The result is an Opening analysis of the Lolli Attack.

You can compare it with the opening report that we have created before, with the most exhaustive analysis of this opening on the Web by Michael Goeller on his very nice looking website and with the analysis that you have done by yourselves.

I suppose that the best method will be to generate your own lesson based on for example the ICOfY database and add your own comments to it. This time I didn’t add any personal, other people’s or general knowledge about this opening to the post, because the main purpose is to show how you can make your own analysis (probably even for another opening).

As we have seen in the automatically generated opening report there are at least 14 move orders reaching the position after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 d5 5.exd5 Nxd5 6.d4 exd4 7.O-O and Black has least eleven alternatives to continue, but only two of them are frequently played and I will limit myself to the three most important ones in this post, but feel free to add the missing continuations to your own chess material. Adding them to this post will make the post more dificult to read. Maybe even now the post is rather difficult to read, because of the fact that I show an example game for each continuation.

Original Response to “The Lolli Attack”

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1. 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 White Repertoire Webliography | The Kenilworthian

Picture taken by Liz West

Photograph of a chess set in the young adult room of the Boxborough library

As you have seen in one of the previous posts one of the most important steps in writing an opening analysis is to select some of the most representative games. But instead of merging the into one game you can also load the games and copy them to the clipboard enabling you to add them to your database of representative opening lines.

Doing this with the ten selected games of the previous lesson results in the following opening report from ChessDB.



You can see that two games seem to have disappeared. This is caused by the fact that the selected opening position doesn’t occur in two of these games.
When comparing all these opening reports and analysis you will see that trying to write a good analysis has everything to do with trying to find a balance between adding enough details without losing the overview.

Now we know how to play this opening we continue with a lesson about how not to play this opening.

Picture taken by Tristan Martin

He played around with different backgrounds and lighting. In order to take this picture he used a mirror, a balloon, and even a champagne glass.

In this chess lesson we are going to combine some of the knowledge of the key squares, the square rule and the square rule for two separated pawns. First have look at the diagram on the left site. It’s a draw. Can you see why? And do you see that the game is won by White if the black pawns are removed from the board?

Both White as well as Black didn’t have other options.


The next lesson is about the usefulness of a chess database.

Picture taken by Jack Pearce

Chess instructions on life size chess board.

The third rank defense is the most important defense in the king and rook versus king, rook and pawn endgame. A lot of people refer to it as the Philidor position, but this name is also used for some other endgame positions.

There is already a lot of information about this position available on the internet, for example in the Philidor position on Wikipedia and I will limit this post to some additional information which probably helps to really understand this position.

First of all it is important to understand that the weaker side strives to capture the pawn or to exchange the rooks while being in a position that the pawn can be stopped. Therefor it is needed to be familiar with the single pawn endgame and the key squares. However the most important part of this endgame is creating a possibility to start a never ending king hunt by the defending rook which also results in a draw.

The third (or sixth) rank defense can be summarized as:

• The black rook is keeping the white king away from the sixth rank.
• As soon as the pawn moves to the sixth rank the defending rook has to be moved back
• starting a kind of king hunt with distant checks

An illustrative example:

The following game between Tarrash and Allies (Naples, 1914) is one of the most famous and illustrative examples of interfering.

In the next chess lesson we will start with the Scotch Gambit.

In one of the previous lessons 4 possibilities to eliminate the defender have been shown:

• Capturing
• Attacking
• Interference
• Distracting

This chess lesson will be focussed on Interference, also known as blocking the defender. The general idea is to block the line between the defender and the piece or square it is trying to defend.

		An illustrative example of this tactical motif is shown in the diagram on the left. The white Rook is attacking the black Knight, but this Knight is defended by the black Rook. By playing 1.d4+ the protection is removed and the Knight can be captured 2.Rxh4. Please note that it is only possible to block a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line. It will be impossible to block a defending Knight, pawn or King.
		Let’s have a look at the next diagram. It’s Black’s turn to move. No pieces are attacked, but White’s Queen is an important defender. Without this Queen it was a mate in one. Black can block this defender by 1. …Ra5+, and White has to play 2. Qxa5 to prevent the mate, but also makes that his Queen will be captured 2…bxa5. The mate can not be avoided 3. Kb1 Bg6+ 4. Rc2 Qf1+ 5. Ka2 Bxc2 6. Be1 Qxe1 7. d5 Qb1+ 8. Ka3 Qa1#. A nice example of interference, showing that we have to consider more targets than the attacked pieces.
		This third diagram gives another example. It is White’s turn to move. White has a kind of double attack by means of a queen fork, but each of the rooks is defending the other one. The move 1. d6 blocks this line and Black will be unable to bring both rooks to safety at the same time. Black’s best move is probably 1…Raxd6, but then White will continue with 2.exd6. This example illustrates that it is not necessary for the inferfering piece to attack anything at all.
		I will leave the solution of this last exercise to you. It is White’s turn to move. You are invited to add the solution to the comments. To give a clue: It is a combination of a discovered attack and interference.

The next lesson is a nice example game of interfering: Tarrasch - Allies (1914).

Original 6 Responses on CTL to “Interfering”

1. 
   genius
   November 12th, 2007 at 12:58 am
   1. Bh7 Qxe2
   2. Bxh6++
2. 
   Chess Teacher
   November 13th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
   @genius
   OK, but I don’t think that Black is going to play 1…Qxe2, but probably 1…Rxh7
3. 
   Azizul
   February 15th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
   It is obvious! 1.Nxf7 and White wins.
4. 
   Chess Teacher
   February 16th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
   @Azizul
   Sorry, but it isn’t that obvious
   1.Nxf7 gives away the advantage
   it will probably be followed by 1…d3 2.Qxd3 Kxf7
   You have to look for a combination of a discovered attack and interference to find the right move.
5. 
   JUAN MAREGO
   March 6th, 2010 at 2:34 am
   1. Bh7 Rxh7,2. Qxb2
   (1. ..Qxe2,2. Bxh6++
6. 
   Chess Teacher
   March 6th, 2010 at 10:26 am
   Yes

This is the first chess lesson of the third part of the series of chess lessons at intermediate level. In the future I will add more chess lessons to the previous parts, but I think it is time to move on to the next level.

The King’s Gambit is one of the most famous gambits. The purpose of this pawn sacrifice is to get an piece development advantage. In fact this is the general compensation for the sacrificed pawn in a gambit.
When you start playing the King’s Gambit you have to be familiar with the key concepts: the fast piece development, the strong pawn center, the (half)open f-line and the attack on f7, all in exchange for the sacrificed pawn on f4. Despite all of these compensations Black can obtain a reasonable position by giving back the extra pawn at a later time and consolidating defensively.
This is one of the main reasons that the King’s Gambit is rarely seen at the master level. On the other hand I think that every chess player has to play some gambits during some time. This contributes to a better understanding of the chess game and gives a feeling about the value of things like piece development. In addition the games are very sharp and interesting, and increase the fun in playing chess games.

In this chess lesson I will limit myself to indicate the most important variations of the King’s gambit. In general the variation ends at the point where the pawn has been recaptured. Black’s largest mistake is to hold onto the pawn at all costs.

In the King’s Gambit White tries to get control about the centre and to increase the pressure on black’s pawn on f7, his greatest weakness. The white Bishop often moves to c4, attacking f7. The Knight on the king’s side is moved to f3 and later on to g5 or e5, also attacking f7. After White playing O-O and opening the f-file White’s Rook is targeted at Black’s weakest square.
As mentioned before this overview is far from complete, but gives an overview of the most important variations. The advantage of this compact representation is that it is probably easier to understand and comprehend. The next chess lesson is about the third rank defense followed by the game Kasparov - Georgiev, 1988.

Original 2 Responses on CTL to “King’s Gambit”

1. 
   harcee sarmiento
   January 9th, 2009 at 5:45 am
   i am an avid fan of the kings gambit accepted and one of the Novelty i am using right now which comes to success is 1.e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. h4!? i am looking for more new theory about it so please give me more new lines on the kings gambit.
2. 
   Chess Teacher
   January 9th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
   1.e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. h4 is the Leonardo Gambit.
   I will later add some information about this gambit on this site.
   Eric Schiller also pays some attention to this gambit in “Unorthodox Chess Openings”.
   One of the oldest examples of this gambit can be found on the net in theEarliest Chess Games by Bill Wall.

White is able to win the game. Find the right moves.
If needed I’ll add the solution to the comments.

---

4 Responses to “White to play and win”

1. 
   JoeD
   December 9th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
   1. Rf1+ Kg8
   2. Rf8+ Kg7
   3. e8N#
   or
   1. … Kg7
   2. e8N+
   3. Rf8#
   Edited by admin at Januari 7th, 2011
   Replaced d8N+ by e8N+ (twice)
2. 
   Chess Teacher
   December 10th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
   Very good
   Black can delay the mate a little bit by
   1.Rf1+ Qf3 2.Rxf3+
   In the …Kg8 variation there is also an alternative for white
   2…Kg8 3.e8=Q+ Kg7 4.Rf7#
   But the main idea about this exercise is that you’ll see the e8N# possibility, so these are only details.
3. 
   Robert Evans
   January 6th, 2011 at 11:05 pm
   Shouldn’t it end on e8N#? After the three move sequence.
   I’ve racked my brain over this, but I don’t see how one promotes on d when there is nothing to force the pawn diagonal.
4. 
   Chess Teacher
   January 7th, 2011 at 7:39 am
   @ Robert Evans
   Of course you are right
   I have updated the comment at the top
   Thanks

This post gives an overview of all the Chess Lessons currently on this site that are intended for the players at intermediate level.

1. A typical beginner's game
2. Activity of pieces (Mobility)
3. Double attack (Forks)
4. The Queen fork (Targets)
5. Eliminate the Defender
6. The Pin
7. Rules for the opening
8. Discovered Attack
9. The Skewer
10. Mating with 2 Bishops
11. The Knight Fork
12. Knight Fork Exercises
13. Mate in two
14. Fried Liver Attack
15. And by now you will be able to solve some of the Chess Exercises                                                            
16. Attacking a pinned piece
17. The square rule
18. The Scotch game
19. A pinned piece can not be counted as a defender
20. The King on the sixt rank
21. The Italian game
22. The Knight pawn
23. The Rook pawn
24. Key squares
25. A trap in the Italian game
26. The opposition
27. Staunton – Williams (London 1851)
28. Trébuchet
29. Mating with Bishop and Knight
30. Driving the King into the right corner
31. Driving the King to the edge
32. KBN-K revisited
33. Some very short Scotch games
34. Getting a draw
35. Mate in three
36. Smothered mate
37. A square rule for separated pawns
38. 8 tactical exercises
39. The Elephant Trap
40. Chess notation symbols
41. Minor promotion
42. The Lasker Trap
43. Noah’s Ark Trap
44. Morphy – Isouard (1858)
45. Bird – Steinitz (1866)
46. The game: Bird – Steinitz (1866)
47. The Halosar Trap
48. Bowdler – Conway (1788)                                                                                                                 
49. King's Gambit
50. The Third Rank Defense
51. Kasparov - Georgiev, 1988
52. Ahvenainen - Ostroem (1975)
53. Chigorin - Steinitz, WC 1892
54. Interfering
55. Tarrasch Alies (1914)
56. The Scotch Gambit (with 4…Bc5)
57. Connected vs split pawns ending
58. ChessDB
59. TWIC and ICOfY
60. ChessDB Opening report
61. How to create an opening analysis?
62. The Lolli attack
63. A new Opening Report
64. How not to play the ...?
65. Luring
66. Deflection
67. Storming the castle
68. Creating a passed pawn
69. The Kieninger Trap
70. The Mortimer Trap
71. The Immortal Game
72. Smothering the king
73. Finding combinations

Some time ago we have looked at a lesson based on the game Bird – Steinitz (1866).
This is the game itself.

One of the most used examples of the classical bishop sacrifice is taken from the game Edgard Colle – John O’Hanlon, Nice 1930. This is rather strange because in this game the normal preconditions before sacrificing the bishop aren’t even met. Some chess players and teachers even considered the sacrifice in this game as unsound. After looking at it more carefully I think that the sacrifice is sound, but that Black will probably be able to survive the attack

Before going to the game I show two positions in which the classical bishop sacrifice enables White to win the game.



Now we will continue with the famous game from Edgard Colle.
Next lesson: The Rook and pawn vs Rook endgame.

Original 2 Responses on CTL to “Colle – O’Hanlon, Nice 1930”

1. 
   Steven Dowd
   October 3rd, 2008 at 9:52 am
   Newest analysis – revised editions of Vukovic by Nunn in English (2003) and Treppner in German (2006) as well as issue 3 of Kassiber and Broznik’s Colle book – all show the sacrifice to be correct.
2. 
   Chess Teacher
   October 3rd, 2008 at 4:16 pm
   I also said that the sacrifice was sound, but with correct counterplay I still believe that Black will be able to survive the attack.
   Das Colle-Koltanowski-System by Bronznik Valeri as well as the footnotes by John Nunn in Vuckovic’s book show the shortcomings in the original analysis of Vuckovic, who considered the sacrifice to be incorrect..

The game below is a classical game between Dr. Thomas Bowdler and Henry Seymour Conway that can be found in the IJ105 database. The reason it became famous was because of Bowdler’s two rook sacrifice, but I’ll show it here for another reason: if you have a material advantage you have to use this material.

---

Original 3 Responses on CTL to “The Halosar Trap”

1. 
   Senthil Kumaran
   January 26th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
   Why should white play Nb5 in step 8, instead of Qf4. Also black’s response in step 8 is also interesting, I thought Bxf3 would be more appropriate.
2. 
   Admin
   January 26th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
   8.Qf4 will be followed by 8…Qxf4 9.Bxf4 Bxd1 10.Kxd1 and black will have a gigantic material advantage
   If black plays Bxf3 after 8.Nb5 then white will continue with 9.Nxc7#.
   It would be better that this checkmate has been mentioned in the lesson above.
3. 
   nobi
   June 29th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
   I don’t think many good players would take the d-pawn as they feel that White gets too much development.

		This position occurred in the game Bird -Steinitz (1866) and Steinitz played the winning move 66…b5+. Bird reacted with 67.Kc3 and now we get an even more interesting position. Should you also have played 66…b5+ or would you have tried something like 66…a3? Are you able to win this won game? What are Black’s next moves? Be careful. Some moves will result in a draw.
		Black to move and wins.

More chess lessons? The next lesson in this series is about the King’s Gambit.

Original 6 Responses on CTL to “Bird – Steinitz (1866)”

1. 
   Mark Spring
   November 20th, 2009 at 10:38 am
   Why didn’t Bird react with 67.Kb5x and take the black pawn?
2. 
   Chess Teacher
   November 20th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
   @Mark
   Because after 66…b5+ 67.Kxb5 it is clear that the other pawn can not be stopped; 67…a3 68.Ka4 a2 69.Kb3 a1=Q
   Bird tries to prevent the promotion of the pawn.
3. 
   kam
   December 21st, 2009 at 5:02 am
   black-Ke4-d5, gameover, right?
4. 
   Isaac
   April 12th, 2010 at 7:06 am
   black: 67. …Ke3 68 Kc2 Kd4 and black wins the white pawn. Correct?
5. 
   Chess Teacher
   April 12th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
   Yes, then white can’t defend the pawn anymore
6. 
   EPIM
   August 19th, 2010 at 2:55 am
   YEAH NICE MOVESS

The game between Garry Kasparov (2812) and Veselin Topalov (2700) in the fourth round of the 1999 edition of the Hoogovens tournament in Wijk aan Zee is called Kaparov’s Immortal. The most noteworthy move of this game is the rook sacrifice on the 24th move. It is nice to replay the game and try to evaluate this position for yourself.
An annotated version of this game by Kasparov himself can be found here. More chess lessons? An overview of the chess lessons can be found by means of the top navigation.

Original 2 Responses on CTL to “Kasparov – Topalov (1999)”

1. 
   Romano
   July 8th, 2009 at 10:30 am
   Please, how I can make put a Java board (and the moves of my games) like yours in my own blog?
   Thanks a lot!
2. 
   Chess Teacher
   July 8th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
   I don’t use Java, but JavaScript by means of my own WordPress plugin, based on palview, under development. As you can see in the Knight forkFExercises I also use a chess widget, that is free to download and is far more appealing, but which I consider less usefull for the chess lessons.
   In addition to this possibility I have seen that the site Chess Publishing gives a nice overview with examples of alternatives to publish chess games on a blogsite.

In this lesson I only show eight diagrams of the rook and pawn versus rook endgame, but this time all the positions correspond to a draw if played properly. Are you able to hold these postions as Black.






The next lesson continues with this Rook and pawn versus Rook endgame. It will contain a useful link and learn you the rule of five.

One Response on CTL to “Rook pawn rook draws”

1. 
   Nabil
   February 1st, 2011 at 10:10 am
   Thank you very much for this endgame lessons it really helps.
   I hope you will continue

The rook and pawn versus rook endgames are very important to study because these are the simplest versions of the very frequent occurring rook endgames.
Let’s have a look at the diagrams below. All these positions are a win for White, but do you know why?



This lesson will explain a part of this KRP-KR endgame.
As indicated above the starting postion of the diagram below is a winning postion for White even if it is Black’s turn to move. Note that Black’s king is unable to approach the white pawn.

See the lesson about mating with a rook.
In the next lesson I have added some (rather similar) diagrams that correspond with a draw.