Saturday 12 October 2019

Creating Weaknesses

I started a DVD-session on "endgame strategies". The following is a nice example of how to play for a win. Within the below position, the white pieces are to be prefered, for sure. But actually wouldn´t really know how to advance things.
The pawn on b7 is a weakness, no doubt. But it seems hard to put yet more pressure on this square. So how appraoch this position? I tried to make tactics on c6 work, but there are simply none to it! To cut it short, Ivanchuk saw his knight on b5 and his bishop on c4. (While I didn´t. Manoveuvering the knight to g5 is fine for me, I might have done this, too. But without the proper plan to direct the bishop towards c4, the move of the knight becomes useless.)
Only a few moves from now black is simply destroyed: f7 cannot be protected and any advance of this pawn simply weakens g6 and h5 too horribly... (Within the game, f6 was played. After the knight went back to f4, the rook entered the scene via e4 to e6. End of story.)

So the key (for me personally) here is to (i) have a plan (not just move pieces) and (ii) identify a second weakness.

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