The Reloader!

I've been going out of my way to get better at pattern recognition and it's been helping me in both rated games and in tactics problems.

As a retired teacher, I know that giving names to processes helps us retrieve them from our brains faster and recognize them more quickly in action.

We all know about the Pin, Discovered Check, Fork, etc., But one tactical motif that I'm sure most chessplayers haven't seen is "The Reloader."

Martin Weteschnik, in his book Chess Tactics from Scratch - the best tactics book I've ever read and with so many diagrams you only need the book to follow the games and problems - created the term and introduces as below under Chapter 4:

I've been practicing chess tactics problems at chesstempo.com where, right around the beginning of 2018, the penalty for not finding the solutions became much larger (like the foolishness at chess.com last year) and my rating fell from the high 1700's into the 1600's.  But the rating-algorithm has been fixed, I've been working my way back up, and my tactics rating (1751.6 at chesstempo) is similar to my daily player rating at chess.com (1763).  As I've improved at tactics problems, I've improved at game play, especially in how fast I see the key squares and pieces.  Today, I went back over 1750 at chesstempo tactics because I recognized The Reloader:

The problem (NOT a chess.com tactics problem) starts here: Black has just taken the White Pawn at g4 and the solver has to find a winning position for White.  It should quickly become clear to the solver that a partial "Mating Net" has been set-up around the Black King and that if the White Rook could safely move to the h-file, it's checkmate to the Black King!  But how can the Rook get to the h-file safely?

Knight to g3! This protects the White Rook if he moves to h5.
But can't the Black f4-Pawn just take the Knight?
Yes, but the White f2-Pawn will function as The Reloader, retaking at f3 with checkmate!

Consequently, Black has to sacrifice his Rookto avoid immediate checkmate:

My tactics ratings have been slowly climbing as I keep practicing the problems, here and at chesstempo, and pattern recognition is a part of it.  After EVERY problem, I try to name the tactics used, look at the TAGs other solvers have labeled the problem, and try to understand why it took me so long to see them.  Two great interactive lists of tactical motifs are here:

https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-tactics--definitions-and-examples

https://chesstempo.com/tactical-motifs.html