Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Knight Trap
I would like to welcome Mr Andrew Crosby to these sections. He is a member of our virtual Chess.com club and takes active part in our online tournaments and matches.
Andrew is an expert in chess gambits, which he usually plays in his games with great success.
Today’s post has been written with his collaboration.
When playing chess, players often confront positions where many options are available.
Sometimes one of them seems clearly better but sometimes two of them seem similarly good.
Because it looks apparently like a problem of double good, the player tends to choose spontaneously one of them.
Nevertheless, when the choice hasn’t any logical reason, the player feels unease thinking that maybe the other move would be better.
How to choose? In these cases, experience and calculation play a key role.
Experience because memories of similar positions played in past games help in identifying the right way to proceed.
Calculation because analyzing some moves beforehand helps to get the idea of future consequences.
Today’s post shows one of these situations where a choice has to be made in a variation of the Caro-Kann where white plays the Blackmar Diemer Gambit.
Garry Kasparov once stated: “Chess is a mental torture”, meaning that chess players continuously struggle in taking decisions.
Add to that, that the frequency of taking “key” decisions in a chess game is higher than in daily life.
A typical classic chess game extends for 4 hours and 40 moves, which means that players have to make decisions every 6 minutes, most of them critical, and without external help.
Nairobi Chess Club closed until further notice because of COVID pandemic.
Nevertheless, our virtual Chess.com club doesn’t stop its activity and regularly organizes online tournaments and matches.
More than 380 members enjoy that chance.
New tournaments will start soon and there is Blitz Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Join now! Limited slots!.
Update about COVID-19 checking the website World Health Organization which includes links to country-specific information.
Stay safe!.
