Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Scandinavian Judo

The majority of followers of these posts probably have listened or read about judo. Judo is a martial art born in Japan about 200 years ago and one of its fundamental concepts is “to maximize the efficiency by minimizing the effort”. It’s worth mentioning that that principle guides many human activities. Judo achieves that goal by means of “controlling hardness by softness”. Explaining it shortly means that resisting a more powerful opponent will result in your defeat while adjusting to and evading his attack will cause him to lose his balance, his power will be reduced and you will defeat him.

You will wonder what judo has to do with chess. The answer is “nothing” but today’s example made me think of both activities. Judge by yourselves and look at the following moves:

Because Black was behind in development, wanted to mobilize their pieces as quite as possible. What Black didn’t expect is White’s “softness” in stopping the attack.

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