White to play

Was playing this game earlier on today, which I thought was destined for a draw until I saw this move..What was it?

1.Rf6 looks like an obvious try. I think Black has to move his rook on f8 (otherwise 2.Rxh6) and then 2.Rg3 looks crushing. The idea is to play Rxg7.

Yeah spot on - I ran this through fritz afterwards and it didn't pick it up - hence, I was ever so pleased with myself

Originally posted by Mad Mac MacMad
Yeah spot on - I ran this through fritz afterwards and it didn't pick it up - hence, I was ever so pleased with myself

I'm amazed Fritz didn't find it. Maybe if you let it mull the position over for longer it would have? Anyway, it was a nice move for you to find - it looks like one of those positions where you think there must be a winning attack but most of the time you just can't find it.

Curiosity got the better of me, so I copied the FEN from the original post and ran it through. Fritz10 had Rf6 as its second choice move pretty quickly, behind Rg3. By the time it had run for just under a minute it had figured out Rf6 was the top candidate by a wide margin. After letting it run for a couple of minutes it showed it as a +33. Oddly enough, its initial first candidate move, Rg3, later fell to candidate 5 with only a 0.7 advantage.

This motiff, where you are attacking the castled King and have a pawn posted on e5, is covered extensively in one of the Daniel King videos from ChessBase. I believe it was volume 1, but I am not completely certain about that. The lines he explores generally still have bishops on the board, but the basic concepts are still applicable to this position. His material is generally quite good I think. I particularly enjoy his 'How Good Is Your Chess?' content.

Originally posted by Mad Mac MacMad
Yeah spot on - I ran this through fritz afterwards and it didn't pick it up - hence, I was ever so pleased with myself

Looks like someone needs to get a refund on their Fritz?

Thanks. I only ran it to move 10. The game was over in 6, so I assumed it got it wrong. It had it as second behind Rg3 on about 0.4 as I recall, although OTB I felt it was the matchwiner

I'll give that a read - I've been in this position a few times before, and had to settle for an end game victory at best, it's obviously a winable position (now, that I can see it)

This is another one I played today which fritz didn't get (in what I would assume to be a normal timeframe) which I felt was the inevitable matchwinner - is the moral of the story, let it run longer or that the machine is beatable

Sorry - I played Bxg3 in this one

Originally posted by Squelchbelch
Looks like someone needs to get a refund on their Fritz?

Na - I think I just need a tutorial 🙂