Black to play and win : (Canadian Game of the Week)

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  • Black to play and win : (Canadian Game of the Week)

    Every week, one member of McGill's chess team analyzes a game (Canadian Game of the Week).

    The last game was between Joey Qin and Raven Sturt at the Canadian Universities Chess Championship (analyzed by Keith MacKinnon). Both players were clearly playing for a win, and it lead to an incredible game. At some point, Raven was probably slightly better, but missed a spectacular finish. Can you spot it (Black to play)?



    The full game (and the solution) is available on the GOTW section of the CFC Newsfeed.

  • #2
    Re: Black to play and win : (Canadian Game of the Week)

    Originally posted by Felix Dumont View Post
    Every week, one member of McGill's chess team analyzes a game (Canadian Game of the Week).

    The last game was between Joey Qin and Raven Sturt at the Canadian Universities Chess Championship (analyzed by Keith MacKinnon). Both players were clearly playing for a win, and it lead to an incredible game. At some point, Raven was probably slightly better, but missed a spectacular finish. Can you spot it (Black to play)?



    The full game (and the solution) is available on the GOTW section of the CFC Newsfeed.
    I found the solution in literally less than two seconds.

    This allows me to comment about something that always bothered me with 99+% of tactics books. You know they always have a solution so you start looking for forcing moves right off the bat. In a game, you don't know there's a tactic so here for example I could easily see myself missing the continuation, especially if I were White in this position. I've only ever seen one book - Hort and Jansa's "What's the Best Move?" - that intentionally tossed in some "duds", i.e. some positions with good-looking continuations that didn't work. I tried to convince the folks at one of the online tactics sites to stick in a small (say 10%) number of duds to help people recognize that solving the problem is only half the battle. You also need to recognize when a solution is possible or not. They thought the idea was nuts. If so, I am still nuts.
    "Tom is a well known racist, and like most of them he won't admit it, possibly even to himself." - Ed Seedhouse, October 4, 2020.

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    • #3
      Re : Re: Black to play and win : (Canadian Game of the Week)

      Yes, the solution is really easy if you know there's a tactic... But I feel like very few players would have actually seen it over the board.

      I also like to ask for the best move when I give problems to young players. They will always try to find ways to gain material at first, and while it is sometimes possible, most of the time the best move will only give a slight advantage without leading to a straightforward move. It is much harder for amateurs (and stronger players) to judge such moves.

      In this case, the post was more to highlight the position (and the game) rather than challenging the readers.

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      • #4
        Re: Black to play and win : (Canadian Game of the Week)

        chesstempo has a " mixed " section where the request is to find best move sometimes defensive, sometimes attacking tactic and sometimes just move to find equality. much tougher than just " while to move and win"

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        • #5
          Re: Black to play and win : (Canadian Game of the Week)

          Originally posted by Tom O'Donnell View Post
          ... something that always bothered me with 99+% of tactics books. You know they always have a solution so you start looking for forcing moves right off the bat. In a game, you don't know there's a tactic so here for example I could easily see myself missing the continuation, especially if I were White in this position. I've only ever seen one book - Hort and Jansa's "What's the Best Move?" - that intentionally tossed in some "duds" ...
          John Nunn has been producing problem books that address this issue (somewhat). Here is a sample.
          Dogs will bark, but the caravan of chess moves on.

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          • #6
            Re : Re: Black to play and win : (Canadian Game of the Week)

            Originally posted by Nigel Hanrahan View Post
            John Nunn has been producing problem books that address this issue (somewhat). Here is a sample.
            I went on Amazon to look at readers' comments about this book. This one is really funny:

            Chess puzzle book for players rated 2800+.

            This review is from: John Nunn's Chess Puzzle Book (Paperback). I am a strong chess player with rating 2000+ and i play for my province chess team. I enjoy buying chess puzzle books, and bought almost all the chess tactics and chess puzzle books on amazon, I also a member of many chess tactic websites and got a large number of chess tactics problems that i can solve in my memory, but to be honest it was impossible to solve any chess puzzle's in this book.

            Most tactics start with: "What did the grandmaster overlooked in this position" or "what did anand miss in this position". So to give u an idea of the tactics in the book, it is tactics that grandmasters miss, So to solve any of the positions in this book u have to be a super grandmaster or a chess computer.

            I would recommend this book to all 2800+ rated players wanting to improve their ratings, any other normal chess student this positions will just not make any sense. In one of his tests he gave a bonus point for seeing some queen sacrifice that happen after 16 moves in a specific tactic line. If any living person can see this then what is the reason for him to buy a book to improve his chess.

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            • #7
              Re: Black to play and win : (Canadian Game of the Week)

              Originally posted by Tom O'Donnell View Post
              I found the solution in literally less than two seconds.

              This allows me to comment about something that always bothered me with 99+% of tactics books. You know they always have a solution so you start looking for forcing moves right off the bat. In a game, you don't know there's a tactic so here for example I could easily see myself missing the continuation, especially if I were White in this position. I've only ever seen one book - Hort and Jansa's "What's the Best Move?" - that intentionally tossed in some "duds", i.e. some positions with good-looking continuations that didn't work. I tried to convince the folks at one of the online tactics sites to stick in a small (say 10%) number of duds to help people recognize that solving the problem is only half the battle. You also need to recognize when a solution is possible or not. They thought the idea was nuts. If so, I am still nuts.
              The solution does jump right out, but it could be a case of patzer see check, patzer give check! But you are right about the knowledge that there is a solution. There are some players that given a problem always find the solution, often very quickly. But in a real game there is no one telling you "In this position you have a winning move."

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Black to play and win : (Canadian Game of the Week)

                Originally posted by Tom O'Donnell View Post
                that intentionally tossed in some "duds",
                My own games collection would be more than adequate for this purpose.

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                • #9
                  Re: Black to play and win : (Canadian Game of the Week)

                  Originally posted by Brad Thomson View Post
                  My own games collection would be more than adequate for this purpose.
                  I hear that... (not about *your* games, I mean in the general sense...)

                  For many years now, I thought that I should simply change my chess name to N.N.
                  ...Mike Pence: the Lord of the fly.

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                  • #10
                    Re: Black to play and win : (Canadian Game of the Week)

                    The only problem might be checking our games for the ones where we stumbled into something nice, but then missed it.

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                    • #11
                      Re: Black to play and win : (Canadian Game of the Week)

                      Originally posted by Tom O'Donnell View Post
                      I found the solution in literally less than two seconds.

                      This allows me to comment about something that always bothered me with 99+% of tactics books. You know they always have a solution so you start looking for forcing moves right off the bat. In a game, you don't know there's a tactic so here for example I could easily see myself missing the continuation, especially if I were White in this position. I've only ever seen one book - Hort and Jansa's "What's the Best Move?" - that intentionally tossed in some "duds", i.e. some positions with good-looking continuations that didn't work. I tried to convince the folks at one of the online tactics sites to stick in a small (say 10%) number of duds to help people recognize that solving the problem is only half the battle. You also need to recognize when a solution is possible or not. They thought the idea was nuts. If so, I am still nuts.
                      Tom what are you waiting for? There's your chance to write a great book.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: Black to play and win : (Canadian Game of the Week)

                        I agree with Tom to some extent. I used to be guilty of doing problems according to theme, which really makes the solution jump out, but at least you learn pattern recognition. This problem reminds me of a checker problem, where you force someone to jump you twice to jump them 3 times. It would be hard to find during a game, but if you have been exposed to similar problems, it would be a lot easier. Thanks for the post Mr. Dumont. I enjoyed finding the 'cheapo'.

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