Chess again...

After the shock of the past few days, I'm bringing this blog back to it's chess and coffee content. I'm still a little dazed as I'm sure most of the Melbourne chess community are, and so this blog might not move too fast for a while yet. Hopefully you'll understand and be patient with me.

I did leave some tactics and endgames on Monday and never got back with the answers. Well, the endgames are going to be serialized here, but I can look at the tactics now.

It was white to play and win here. Ukrainian GM Gennadi Kuzmin played 22.Nxd6! pinning his own knight and after 22..Ne8 he unpinned with the amazing 23.Nxf7!! leaving the following position

The point is that 23..Rxd4 loses to the double check 24.Nh6+ Kh8 25.Rxf8# Ftacnik tried to close the f-file with 23..Bf6 but resigned after 24.Ne5+!! when the bishop on f6 becomes pinned so after 24..Kh8 white can take the exchange 25.Nxd7 as 25..Bxd4 loses immediately to 26.Rxf8#

The other position led to a classic tactical shot.

Kuzmin-Sveshnikov USSR ch 1973 it is white to play and win. Kuzmin came out with the double bishop sacrifice 17.Bxh7+!! Kxh7 18.Qh5+ Kg8 19.Bxg7!! [threatening 20.Qh8#] 19..Kxg7

White has sacrificed both bishops to destroy black's king cover. After 20.Qg4+ Kh7 21.Rf3 black resigned as he will have to give up his queen to avoid immediate mate.

This is, of course, an excellent tactic to bring off in a tournament game, but Kuzmin would have been fully aware of the double bishop sacrifice, as should all chess players. The famous Lasker-Bauer game is the classic early version of this great attack:

Here's the famous position after black's 14th move, and it is probably easy to spot what the second World Champion did as white in this position now that you already know the theme. Here's the game: