The Chess Mind

In the game Jan Timman-Emanuel Berg, 14th Sigeman & Co. 2006 (played this past Friday), the players reached this position after Black's 65th move:



White to move and win. (Remember, R + N vs. R is a draw except in special circumstances, none of which will apply here.) When you think you've got it worked out, click here for the whole game and the solution (and don't forget to check out the second, bonus game as well).

Warning club players to avoid sending their queens on pawn-grabbing raids used to be a mainstay of popular chess books, but in our more concrete, enlightened age, we're more skeptical about such generalizations. That said, those rules of thumb exist for a reason - take a look.

Accompanying the Russian Team Championship is a parallel women's event, and yesterday's first round game between former FIDE women's champ Antoaneta Stefanova and Elisabeth Paehtz featured some neat tactics in the closing attack.



Start here with White (Stefanova) to move. When you think you've found the move and worked out some of the possible continuations, click here to see how it all turned out.

From a variation in the correspondence game Savinov-Latronico, GM Norm Tournament 2006 (presented in Chess Today issue 1984):



White to move and win (the solution and the full game are available here).