5.2.01.
Simple Cases: One Guard Protects Two Men.
In earlier work we have studied many ways of loosening a piece or square. One is to capture the guard. Another is to make a capture on the contested square, allow a recapture, and see if the piece left standing there is loose. Still another is to ask whether the guard also is protecting something else that you might take.
That last method is our focus in this chapter.
We will be looking at cases where you want to take something. It's guarded. We ask whether the guard also is guarding any other targets—another piece, or a mating or forking square. If it is, the guard is said to be over-worked: it has too many defensive responsi-bilities. The next question is which of the two things it protects you should try to take first.
Different move orders can have different con-sequences, as we shall see. You may be able to distract the guard from the first target by taking the second one; or you may be able to take one of them for free.
Notice that there are two general ways to see the pattern described here. You can examine your opponent’s defenses with an eye out for any pieces with more than one defensive job;
or you can spot a target you want to take (a piece or a square), see that it is guarded, and ask whether the guard has other responsibili-ties. It amounts to the same thing either way, and you will want to be at home with both trains of thought.
We start here with simple cases where a sin-gle guard protects two enemy men. We will look at quite a few of these. It is important to be comfortable with them, as this theme arises often.
Dg797: In this first position to the left, be aware of the enemy pieces you attack and
what prevents you from taking each of them.
White’s a1 rook attacks the bishop on a3, which is protected only by Black’s queen.
White’s c3 bishop attacks the knight on f6—
which also is protected only by Black’s queen. The logic of the opportunity becomes clear: the queen can't effectively protect both pieces; if you take one, the other should be left loose.
Dg797: White to move
Thus White starts with BxN, using the less valuable of his two attackers first and inviting it to be taken. If Black recaptures QxB, his bishop on a3 is loose and White takes it with his rook.
Dg798: White to move
Dg798: White’s immediate problem is that his queen is attacked by Black’s bishop. White
looks at the attacking possibilities he has available and sees two principal candidates:
QxBd5, which doesn’t much help as Black replies QxQ; and RxBe7, which is more inter-esting because the rook then attacks Black’s queen, creating a reciprocal threat to offset the threat Black has pending—a hostage.
True, Black can play QxR, momentarily win-ning the exchange; but then White safely plays QxB+ after all (almost a good queen fork, but the rook on a8 has protection). No-tice the visual relationships here. Black’s queen provides the only protection for both of his bishops. Since both bishops are under at-tack by White, one of them has to give.
Again, the usual and obvious maxim is to start by making the capture that uses the less valu-able of your two attackers—here, the rook.
If you find that your queen is attacked, re-member that the attacker usually must have protection; so take a moment to ask whether its guardian has other responsibilities as well.
Dg799: White to move ]
Dg799: Look for any captures White can make. Observation one: White can take Black’s knight with his rook. Observation two: Black’s queen guards the knight. Obser-vation three: Black’s queen guards other things, too—including the bishop on f6, which White also can capture. So now the remaining question is the order of operations best used to take advantage of Black’s over-worked queen. White can start with NxB or with RxN. We have seen that the usual choice would be to start with your less valuable piece, in effect offering it up as a sacrifice with the threat that you will make a worse capture afterwards. But that principle doesn't
always hold. Let's think through its applica-tion here:
(a) White could begin with NxB+, forking Black’s king and rook. Now Black plays QxN, seemingly allowing White to follow up with RxNc8. But not so fast: once the queen moves, the knight at c8 still is guarded by the rook on f8. So White actually loses the ex-change with this sequence. Correct play for White instead is...
(b) 1. RxN—this time capturing with the more valuable of his attackers (and indeed making a temporary sacrifice of the ex-change). If Black recaptures QxR, White now has NxB+—not only a capture but a fork of Black’s king and rook, allowing White to win back the exchange that he sacrificed at the beginning of the sequence. White emerges a piece ahead.
The lesson: when you see that an enemy piece is trying to guard two pieces, think carefully about which to take first; imagine each cap-ture and its consequences. Move order mat-ters, sometimes making it better to start by capturing with your more valuable piece after all.
Dg800: White to move
Dg800: The current idea may become slightly harder to see, but structurally no different, when the pieces involved are compressed in a small space. White has attacks against Black’s bishop and knight. Black’s queen and knight protect the bishop, and his queen protects the knight as well. The fact that his queen is pro-tecting both pieces suggests a vulnerability.
White experiments with captures and the
move orders involved in them and sees that if he plays BxB, Black is in trouble no matter how he replies: if he recaptures QxB, he leaves his knight on c5 loose for the taking; if he recaptures NxB, he leaves his queen loose for the taking.
Dg801: Another case of compression, this time at the other end of the board. Black has a little knot of pieces in the corner. They protect each other in a circle.
Dg801: White to move
The rook on g8 guards the rook on h8. The bishop on h7 guards his rook on g8. The rook on h8 guards both the bishop and the other rook. That last observation is the critical one:
we see one enemy piece guarding two oth-ers—a clue that it may be overworked. Play with captures in various orders to see if the replies leave one of the other pieces an odd man out. White might like to try 1. RxR, but then Black replies RxR and the Black rook left on g8 remains guarded by the bishop on h7. But 1. RxB for White is different: once Black plays RxR, his rook on g8 is left loose.
White takes it with his remaining rook on the g-file. Or Black can reply to RxB with RxRg1; then White plays RxRh8. Either way, White wins a piece.
Dg802: Black’s rook on a8 is under attack, as is his queen; but consider your offensive op-tions before worrying about it. Take apart the knot of pieces near White’s king by asking methodically what attacks what (and what defends what). There are no fewer than four pieces that Black's queen might take. The most attractive capture, of course, would be QxQ. What prevents it?
Dg802: Black to move
White’s bishop on g2. So now you ask what else the g2 bishop protects and are led to the knight on h3, which you can take with RxN+.
The beauty of the move is that White has no choices to make in reply. His king is under attack and has no flight squares, nor does Black have anything to interpose, so BxR is compulsory. Now White has QxQ+ in return for his sacrifice of the exchange, and an even-tual forced mate.
Notice from the beginning the telltale visual pattern in which the White bishop supplies protection two fellow pieces in a Y forma-tion—a sign of weakness.
And again we see the importance of move order. It might have seemed plausible, but would have been mistaken, for Black to start with QxQ, inviting BxQ and then planning to win a piece with RxNh3+ followed by RxBf3.
Actually, though, this wins less than a whole piece. In reply to 2. RxN+ White has 2. ...Kg2 and suddenly both of Black’s rooks are under attack—one by White's king and the other by White's bishop; and now the king guards the bishop, making it safe. Black plays Rh3xBf3, but then White replies KxRf3 and Black only ends up winning two pieces for a rook. He still is losing, since he was laboring under a larger material deficit than that from the out-set.
Dg803: You are playing the Black pieces.
Inventory your attacking options and what stops them from working. Your queen attacks White’s rook. Your bishop attacks White’s knight and pins it to White’s king. Your knight attacks White’s bishop. All of the
at-tacked pieces have protection, but don’t stop there; look at the extent of the protection and its stability.
Dg803: Black to move
The rook on b1 is guarded by White’s queen, so turn your attention to the guard: does the queen also have responsibility for something else that you might therefore be able to take?
Yes; for one thing, it is the only guard of the bishop on f3 (the pinned knight is no defen-sive help). So Black plays NxB+. If White recaptures QxN (he shouldn’t—he should play Ke2), Black has QxR+.
Dg804: Black to move
Dg804: This study resembles the previous one but with Black’s queen positioned on a5 in-stead of a2. This changes the analysis in sig-nificant ways. Once more White’s bishop is attacked once and defended only once, since the knight on d2 remains pinned. But this time that knight on d2, rather than the rook on b1, becomes the other offensive focus for Black.
He attacks the knight twice, with his bishop and with the queen behind it. The knight ap-pears to be guarded twice, by its king and queen. But a king is a suspect defender; it cannot recapture on a square that remains
under attack. And the queen has responsibili-ties elsewhere, as we have seen. So the knight only seems to be protected twice; perhaps it would be more accurate to say it is protected one and a half times, since the queen that de-fends it is stretched thin. In this case either piece it protects can be taken first:
(a) Black can play 1. ...BxN+. You might suppose that White would reply 2. QxB, threatening to take Black’s loose queen with his own; Black replies 2. ...QxQ, and after White’s recapture 3. KxQ, Black has 3.
...NxB+, winning a piece. But Black has bet-ter in reply to 2. QxB: the delightful 2.
...NxB+—which, when so played a move ear-lier, is a knight fork of White's king and queen. The priority of check requires White to move his king and lose his queen to NxQ a move later. White’s better reply to 1. ...BxN is just to move his king to e2 where it can pro-tect his bishop and limit his losses to a piece.
Or (b) Black also can begin with 1. ...NxB+.
Now if White recaptures with 2. QxN, White has 2. ...BxN and again wins a piece. If White moves his king instead of playing QxN, Black has NxNd2 on the next move.
Dg805: White to move
Dg805: As we have said, the current idea can be a bit harder to see in cases where the target is attacked twice and appears to be guarded twice, but where one of the guards is over-worked and the extra protection it supplies therefore is illusory. In this example White has a possible capture in QxB. He can't play it because Black’s queen guards his bishop. So carefully examine what other work the queen is doing; follow its lines and examine
every-thing it protects or seems to protect. The f7 pawn is the eye-catcher because White al-ready attacks it twice (with his queen and bi-shop) and because it's next to Black’s king.
The pawn appears to be guarded by both Black’s king and queen, but here as in the last position we remember that the king is a sus-pect defender of other pieces, and we already know that the queen has responsibilities else-where. So White plays 1. Bxf7+. Since it gives check the move can't be ignored. Black must play carefully, as White has three pieces closing in on his king against only two imme-diate defenders; if Black merely moves the king out of check (i.e, to h7 or f8), he will be mated soon. His best bet is QxB, removing one of the attackers. Now White plays QxBd6 and has gained a pawn—and will pick up the loose pawn on e5 with his queen a move later.
White emerges with a material advantage and better position.
To keep the exposition manageable we mostly have been focusing on how enemy pieces are defended, not pawns. But as this position shows, of course, pawns make perfectly good targets as well and mustn't be overlooked.
Dg806: White to move
Dg806: White's bishop on b5 attacks one of Black’s knights, which is guarded by Black’s other knight and his queen. Meanwhile White’s queen attacks the other knight on f6, which is guarded—again—by the queen and by the first knight (the one on d7). The key observation is that Black’s queen is guarding both pieces. This suggests that the queen is overworked. Normally we might take advan-tage by capturing one of the pieces the queen guards, but here that won't quite work because
of the extra protection those two pieces have;
whichever knight White captures, Black re-captures with his other knight and avoids trouble. But we still can exploit the over-worked queen. The trick in this case is to throw another attacker at one of the pieces the queen guards. White does it with Bg5, which also pins the f6 knight to the queen. Notice that even with the pin, each of Black’s knights is protected as many times as it is attacked;
but Black nevertheless is in trouble because the queen is doing too much work. If White next were to play BxNd7, Black would have to recapture with QxB—and now the knight on f6 would be loose. Black's likely reply to Bg5 by retreating his queen, say to f8. Then White plays BxNf6 (not BxNd7, which allows Black to escape with no loss after he recap-tures). Black recaptures NxBf6, and now White wins a piece with QxN.
Dg807: White to move
Dg807: In the position on the left White has a possible capture in RxN. It's prevented by Black’s bishop on d6, which protects his knight. So that raises another question: does the bishop protect anything else you might therefore be able to take? Yes—the e5 pawn, which White can capture with his f3 knight.
After he does, Black is stuck. He can forfeit the pawn straightaway or he can recapture with BxN—but this allows White to play RxN, still gaining a pawn. The Black bishop was overworked; it had too many defensive responsibilities. Whenever you see that an enemy piece guards more than one of its fel-lows, consider whether a blow like this might be possible.
It all looks simple enough, but complications lurk nearby. Suppose that after White’s Nxe5 Black moves his knight from b4 to c2: a zwi-schenzug (or “in between" move) that post-pones the recapture and instead attacks White’s rook on e1. What would you do as White? It would be natural to move your rook, perhaps to c1 where it attacks the invad-ing knight. Natural but wrong; for you must ask about Black’s next check and see that he would then have Nxe3+. Of course you just take his knight with your f2 pawn, but the priority of check has done its work: now Black takes your knight that still is sitting on e5—and there no longer is a Black knight on b4 for you to capture in reply.
What went wrong? When Black played Nc2, White should not have moved the rook from e1. Better just to leave it there and push for-ward again with the knight you used the first time—the one then on e4. With Nd7 White suddenly forks both of Black’s rooks, so now White can afford to let Black play NxRe1+.
White replies with the recapture Rb1xN and then wins back his rook a move later at the other end of the board (Black only has time to save one of them). In the end White keeps the pawn he set out to capture.
Dg808: White to move
Dg808: First you size up White's possible captures and find two: RxB and KxN. Second you ask what prevents them from working and see that the trouble in both cases is the rook on h8—so something has to give. White starts with RxB (obviously he can’t start by capturing with his king), and then if Black plays RxR White has KxN. You might as well have reached the same result by a trivially
different train of thought: seeing that you al-most can play the capture KxN, noting that you can't because the knight is prevented by the rook on h8, and then asking whether the rook also protects anything else. This leads you to the bishop on e8 and its capture by your rook. White wins two minor pieces for a rook.
That much should be easy enough to see. But can you spot the zwischenzug that—again—
almost foils the whole thing? After White plays RxB, Black can postpone the recapture and play Nf3+, removing his knight from danger and requiring White to spend a move responding to the threat against his king. This he can do easily enough with BxN; but if White’s bishop weren’t on the long diagonal (if it were instead on, say, a6), White’s se-quence here wouldn’t work. He would have to move his king, after which Black would play RxR.
The subtheme repeats: don’t assume your opponent necessarily will respond to your capture with a recapture. Especially in these positions where one enemy guard defends two of his pieces, it is natural for your opponent (or for you when you are playing defense) to react to the capture of one of those pieces not
The subtheme repeats: don’t assume your opponent necessarily will respond to your capture with a recapture. Especially in these positions where one enemy guard defends two of his pieces, it is natural for your opponent (or for you when you are playing defense) to react to the capture of one of those pieces not