A Greek Gift. A missed smothered mate. Rook and Knight endgame

Hi there,

Looking for some analysis on this game please. I'm blacks

Firstly, I'm wondering if I had the opportunity to play a Greek Gift. Also is it common for a 1200 player like myself to miss a win with a queen sacrifice and a smothered mate.

Finally, my opponent resigned a rook and knight endgame. I was wondering if you can look at the final position and give me some advice for a strategy to win. I have finished the game with the computer at level 10 and won but I would like to hear you ideas or end game principles to win the endgame.

Thanks in advance

I think you were in a position to offer the gift after c3. 

It is hard to say whether a 1200-rated rapid player should be expected to see a smothered mate in a 15 10 game. I see that you have successfully picked it up in Tactics Trainer problems.  I think you will see it going forwards 

The main advantages of a rook over a knight in an endgame are the rook's ability to cover both sides of a board simultaneously. Also the ability to pin the knight against the king.  I am sure you can find an endgame manual to go over a typical endgame.

Thanks so much for replying

This highly depends on the individual players. I am pretty sure there are still a tiny minority of 1400+ or 1500+ players who have not seen such checkmates before.

I would expect at least 75% of all the 1200+ players to have seen such smothered mates before and at least 25% of all the 1200+ players to have actually played them out on board.

The ending is clearly winning for you, up the exchange, up a pawn and the knight has not got an anchor point to sit on supported by a pawn. As you have an extra pawn you can also consider simply exchanging your rook for the knight and winning a king and pawn ending (although this is not necessary and would make it trickier). Rc8 looks a good start attacking the knight. Wherever it goes you can then bring the rook down and attack it again eg. Nd4 Rc4 or Ne3 Rc3. From here you can move across to the a file and white cannot hold his a pawn. After this just run the a pawn down and the best white can do is sac the knight for the pawn to stop promotion, and actually knights are so poor in such situations that with accurate play with your rook you can promote without allowing the knight to do this. A shame you missed that smothered mate, its always a sweet way to win.