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After the piece on a couple of concepts that sound bad on the face of it but are actually not, here’s another piece of advice to the beginners from Round 1 of the currently happening 38th Premier National Women Chess Championship 2011 – a match in which one of the tournament’s favorites, IM Tania Sachdev – rated 2419, beat WIM Bagyashree Thipsay. I also hope to intrigue you with the happenings of the championship so that you may follow what is going on in Chennai even as you read this.
Let me directly get to the battle scene on the chessboard. Both players have equal pieces on the board and not necessarily equal positions. The situation looks thus, with white to play.
Tania, playing white, has a queen and rook attack aimed at her king by Bagyashree. However, the presence of two pawns on the same file makes the attack look toothless. The Queen is capable of moving in multiple directions, yes, but look at that black queen and see what it can do – nearly nothing. Bagyashree got into this position and must get her attacking pieces threatening again. White had, in its previous move, removed its bishop from F3 (the square where the row marked 3 meets the column marked F) to H1. At our beginner levels, what we should note here is that moving a bishop to a corner is not considered as a good move. A bishop’s power is to move in four directions. By taking it to H1, Tania is making that bishop one-fourth as effective. If we can see that as beginners, Bagyashree can see that as well.
The intent, hence, is clear to Bagyashree. Tania has moved her bishop to H1 because it was impeding her plan. The only piece that the bishop was impeding at F3 was the pawn at F2. That’s her plan, then. Bagyashree doesn’t see much threat from that pawn. She moves her king from G7 to F7 – taking the king out of the G1 rook’s sight – and also because of some threats she senses from the pawn at F2 – about which we will see sometime later. Tania moves the seemingly irrelevant F2 pawn to F4 – Bagyashree uses her E5 pawn to take the F4 pawn. Okay now, from here, Tania has a Charlie Sheen style #winning combo (the board situation is shown below). Try to find that winning move before reading further.
Tania Sachdev vs Bagyashree Thipsay, 2011 – Move 31
Things weren’t as simple as it has been explained above, but at this point, it is fairly straight forward. Tania Sachdev’s next move prompted Bagyashree Thipsay to resign the game right there – her winning move from here was using the Queen to take Bagyashree’s knight – shown below.
Tania Sachdev 1 – 0 Bagyashree Thipsay, 2011
Now, why did Bagyashree resign at this point? Surely her king is not in immediate danger?
Let’s look at her two options at hand – take the queen with the pawn at G2 or, well, not doing that. You see, her King’s movement from G7 to F7 was partially because had it not been for that move, the G2 pawn would be ‘pinned’, or removing the queen would be an illegal move as it would expose the king to the opposing rook – or in other words, no can do. But then, she can’t do it now either, as White’s next move in that scenario would be NxD7 (using the knight to remove Black’s bishop at D7). Check. The king wouldn’t be able to move to E7 because of the white pawn at D6; it wouldn’t be able to move to G7 or G8 because of the waiting rook at the end of the file. Yes, Check and mate.
Okay, with that option out of the window, what happens when she doesn’t take out Tania’s queen? Immediate threats include white’s queen taking out the G7 pawn instead – with a mate there as well. The two moves remaining now for Bagyashree are moving the G pawn forward or placing a check for the opposing king – with her Bishop to F5. Moving the G pawn leads to Tania’s queen getting a freeway to H8 and ta da, check mate again. The idea of placing a check with the bishop could be dealt with a simple move of the white king to a dark square in B2, preventing any further checks – leaving Tania with a more powerful threat.
Bagyashree saw no point in playing further – and the game was over.
