Daily Chess Improvement: Chess Swindle Tactic!

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  CraigB says:

  April 10, 2017 at 10:20 pm

  1. Ne5 threatening to penetrate to g6 or f7 with the Q and also hitting the white-squared B, whose destruction will cripple Black’s counterplay. For instance, 1…K:f6 2. N:c6 forking the R and B, or 1…Nh3+ (trying to make use of the Bc6) 2. Kh2 (planning to meet 2…R:h2+ with 3. K:h3).

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    Yancey Ward says:

    April 11, 2017 at 1:51 am

    This looks right to me. Additionally, black cannot minimize the damage by trying to protect the bishop at a7 with the rook from either a8 or d7- the latter looks like mate starting with Qxh6 and the other just loses even more material by my count.

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  James Attewell says:

  April 11, 2017 at 5:36 am

  From Wikipedia
  In chess, a swindle is a ruse by which a player in a losing position tricks his opponent, and thereby achieves a win or draw instead of the expected loss. It may also refer more generally to obtaining a win or draw from a clearly losing position. I. A. Horowitz and Fred Reinfeld distinguish among “traps”, “pitfalls”, and “swindles”. In their terminology, a “trap” refers to a situation where a player goes wrong through his own efforts. In a “pitfall”, the beneficiary of the pitfall plays an active role, creating a situation where a plausible move by the opponent will turn out badly. A “swindle” is a pitfall adopted by a player who has a clearly lost game. Horowitz and Reinfeld observe that swindles, “though ignored in virtually all chess books”, “play an enormously important role in over-the-board chess, and decide the fate of countless games”.