Forum

Starting a mini series called: Patterns you NEED to know and here's the first one.It's a middle Pawn + King end game!This will work with ANY Pawn on the b, c, d, e, f, and g files.Actual Patterns to memorize:Opposition - When their King is on the same file as your Pawn, you must block with your King by putting it in front of theirs.How to make forward progress - After opposition, their King needs to go left or right, that's our cue to go up one square and the in the opposite direction of their King. If they go left, we go up one and right one.Making a Queen - after these two patterns, your King will land on e6 and we can finally start pushing our Pawn up. Once we get behind the King, we can push the King to d7 or f7 which protects the Pawn the rest of the way!

Another mini series but this time for Traps you NEED to know!These are in no real order and I'll make sure to include older ones that I've already posted too. The first one is the 'Lasker Trap'. Named after Emanuel Lasker, the 2nd World Champion.This trap is for the Black pieces and while it doesn't win the game on the spot, it does put Black in a winning position. Here's me explaining the trap in a video format

I finally got a Brilliant move in an actual game vs someone with 11. Nxb5!!If you don't take back with axb5, there's Nxc7+ forking the King and Rook but not only that, if they don't play Qxc7 and just move the King to e7 or d7 after getting checked, it's a forced mate (I definitely didn't see that though). All I saw was a big attack and chance for a nice fork.The other point is that after they take with 11. Nxb5!!, axb5, their Knight is trapped in our corner and we can take it back whenever we need to. I chose to wait and play 12. Ne5 threatening Nc6+ which forks the King and Queen. The computer prefers12. Qc1 instead, threatening Qc5+ and forcing their Queen to block or their King into a mate in 4.Luckily for me, my opponent completely missed the King/Queen fork and played 12... Nf6Either way, this was one of my most thought through games and I'm super proud of how far I've come

While it was mostly opening moves, towards the end it was not so obvious what the best moves were. Anyways, just proud of myself. That's all!

Here's the puzzle! White to move and win - Mate in 4

Here's today's daily!White to move and win material!

This is a very useful trap in a super standard opening where Black wins a piece and exposes White's King relatively early. I'm going to be trying it out in Bullet to see if I can pull it off.Unless you already know about it, I can see people from 1500 or lower falling for this.https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/pgn/2T5484rrXp

So I've never played against this opening (notably) as of yet but that all changed today...I pushed D6 to really close out their Queen and Bishop.After Queen F6 by them, I really REALLY thought they were going to take my Rook on A1.I was so prepared for 1.Qxb2, Nf3 2.Qxa1, Be5 trapping the Queen that I completely missed Mate in 1...I've never been Mated so fast or had such low accuracy (due to small amount of moves)https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/18294036483?tab=analysis