Surprise Moves

A couple of the later chapters of "1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations" have problems that are not categorised, other than as "Surprise Moves", "The Helpless King", or "The Weakened Castled Position". Often these are mating problems, and to find the solution it is often necessary to see several checkmates that utilise a variety of pieces in 'unusual' positions.

Reinfeld position #794
White to move

The King is lured into one of two mating nets by 1. Nf7 clearance of the e-file 1. ... Kxf7 2. Qxe6+ decoying the King to the mating net. After 2. ... Kxe6 you need to have seen 3. Ng5# before playing 1. Nf7:

Reinfeld position #794
Variation 1

And if instead Black plays 2. ... Kg6 3. g4 immobiling the King and threatening both Bxf5# and Nh4# 3. ... Be5 4. Nh4#.

Reinfeld position #794
Variation 2

All of which brings me to my point for today. This sort of combination resists catagorisation by tactical motif, and yet it is a most fundamental type - targets need to be immobilised, and what White does here is lead the Black King down a blind alley then whacks him.

Sometimes 'simpler' combinations might win some material because the defender has to avoid a whole variation where such a 'complex' mating position is forcable. "Start at the checkmate position, and work backwards" - learning to checkmate should be the first step in learning tactics. Visualising checkmates, the 'pattern recognition' part of Chess, comes from practicing checkmate problems and building up an internal database of checkmate positions, just as with the other tactical motifs.

Maybe I should have started by reading "1001 Brilliant ways to Checkmate"...