Tuesday, September 18, 2007

The Most Powerful Knight

I ordered a book called How to Play the Sicilian from amazon, and I soon hope to have a review of it for everyone out there. Until then, I recently played a game that had a position that was somewhat beautiful. If not beautiful, it was at least interesting!

It's black to move. The move Nxd3+ should be immediately apparent. I don't know why white moved the king to b2 here, probably a case of time pressure and not expecting the knight check in the first place. But here you can see the absolute power of the Knight. A Knight can be interesting because when it attacks other non-Knight pieces the attack is never mutual. Here the Knight is forking every single kind of piece (other than another Knight) and they are all helpless against him!

3 comments:

jrobi said...

That would definitely be a nice fork! How is that book you are reading?

Slatts said...

Unfortunately the book is still in the mail, should be here tomorrow or friday. I will definately let you know how it is.

I generally play the sicilian these days. I tried the Scandinavian, but I really didn't like the positions I got out of it. Problem is, I don't know all the subtleties of the Sicilian and often get myself into a "race for the king" which I often am on the receiving end.

Slatts said...

^^Correction, I just got the book today and so far it is very helpful for me to understand positions and themes...I may do a post on each chapter instead of just a comprehensive book review.