The Chess Mind

The Essent tournaments are over (the Crown Group was won decisively by Ivan Sokolov and the Open by Nijboer, Fier and Haslinger, as you may recall), but thanks to Chess Today I have one more bit of Essent-related information to report. Whether it's an annual tradition or not I do not know, but at least this year an original study by Israeli IM and study composer Yochanan Afek was invented specially for this event.


Afek 2008; White to play and win

The solution can be found on the tournament site (scroll down and click the "Tournament problem" link on the lower left) or here.

(That title might get some attention from the search engines!)

As Wikipedia helpfully puts it, "domination occurs when a piece has a relatively wide choice of destination squares, but nevertheless cannot avoid being captured." Domination studies are often especially difficult, perhaps because players generally go after relatively stationary targets like a weak king or an isolated pawn. It's very rare that we attempt to trap pieces on an open board, especially in situations where they seem to have significant mobility.

It's a major theme in studies, as evidenced by Kasparyan's Domination in 2,545 Endgame Studies, but it doesn't seem to have caught on among casual study fans. Maybe this is because the beauty of domination studies is more abstract, or maybe it's because they are comparatively difficult. Fortunately, there are simpler examples in the genre, like this one from the Chess Cafe:


E. Paoli 1949; White to move and win.

The solution, when you're ready for it, can be found in the Chess Cafe article here (permalink here). Maybe you won't rush out and buy the Kasparyan book afterwards, but I hope solving this study will increase your appreciation of the genre.