In sports, positional skill is a combination of awareness and tactical acuity. In basketball, for example, it’s knowing when to set a pick and roll. In football it’s the quarterback and wide receiver spotting a defensive blitz and throwing the ball quickly to the outside. In tennis it’s pulling your opponent outside the court with a sharply angled shot and then charging the net. And in chess one type of positional play is putting your opponent on his back.
With this hint in mind please find white’s best move.
Tempting for white in this position is for white’s e4 pawn to take black’s d5 pawn. The better move, however, is to advance the e4 pawn to e5, attacking black’s knight. Black’s best reply is to retreat the knight back to g8. This is followed up with white’s queen capturing black’s d5 pawn (see next diagram).
Here, white’s pieces are active and black is cramped. White’s e5 pawn, queen and knight dominate the center and prepare various attacking lines, especially along the “d” file and f4-b8 diagonal.
In response to white’s pawn push to e5, black might consider a counterattack with pawn d4, threatening white’s knight on c3. This loses for black. First, white’s e5 pawn takes black’s knight. Black’s d4 pawn takes white’s knight in turn.
Now white uncorks queen to e2, check. Black can only stop checkmate by blocking the queen check with either its queen or bishop. Black blocks the check with its bishop and white’s f6 pawn takes the bishop (see next diagram).
Black’s queen takes the pawn followed by white trading queens and then capturing black’s pawn on c3. When the dust settles, white has traded a pawn for a bishop.
Another option for black after white advances its pawn to e5 is knight to e4. White’s knight takes black’s d5 pawn. White’s knight is supported by its queen and is working in conjunction with its e5 pawn.
By contrast, black’s knight is advanced but loose and has to be wary of a timely queen to e2 by white, e.g. pawn to d6 by black then queen to e2. Black can support the knight with pawn to f5, but this opens up black’s kingside, e.g. pawn to f5 and white pushes it g2 to g4 with numerous attacking lines in the air.
The theme this week is positional intelligence. For instance, Spain recently gave a lesson in positional intelligence in defeating Argentina in the finals of the World Cup with a false‑9 movement, inverted runs, and an overlapping width in overtime.
Reach Eric Morrow at ericmorrowlaw@gmail.com or (505) 327-7121.