I was hanging around in Live Chess earlier and watched most of a game between two players of moderate strength. The battle was fairly even, but black was driving his pawns hard toward the promotion line. After some time pushing wood, looking for the way through, white was confronted with a difficult dilemma.
After the opening 1 fxg5, black uncorked a delightful-looking tactical stream that (while I'd seen it before in various contexts) strongly reminded me of a tesuji in Go called the Ladder (shicho in Japanese; see http://senseis.xmp.net/?Ladder for an example).
White cannot help but watch powerlessly as black's queen approaches--the fourth rank is locked off by the rook, and any move onto the second permits the pinning Rd2, followed by the promotion of the e-pawn.
I was hanging around in Live Chess earlier and watched most of a game between two players of moderate strength. The battle was fairly even, but black was driving his pawns hard toward the promotion line. After some time pushing wood, looking for the way through, white was confronted with a difficult dilemma.
After the opening 1 fxg5, black uncorked a delightful-looking tactical stream that (while I'd seen it before in various contexts) strongly reminded me of a tesuji in Go called the Ladder (shicho in Japanese; see http://senseis.xmp.net/?Ladder for an example).
White cannot help but watch powerlessly as black's queen approaches--the fourth rank is locked off by the rook, and any move onto the second permits the pinning Rd2, followed by the promotion of the e-pawn.