An astonishing oversight

What would you play in the diagrammed position?

If you said 10...Nde5! or 10...Nce5!, take full credit. White's position is already resignable after either knight move. White loses two pawns and is forced to move his king. Mega Database 2013 finds 18 games that reached the above position. In 15 of them, Black moved one of the knights to e5. He scored 14.5 points in those 15 games.

If you said anything other than 10...N(either)-e5!, please enroll in Remedial Chess Tactics 101 forthwith. But don't feel too bad: you're in good company. Garry Kasparov, arguably the greatest player of all time, also missed it. He played the lemon 10...Nb4?, which would have allowed White to survive after 11.Bd2! when White is only a little worse (-0.47 according to Komodo 9.02). Instead, White played 11.Bb1? and was steamrollered.

How long has the shot 10...Ne5! been known, you ask? For almost 90 years. It was first seen in Norman-Vidmar, Hastings 1925/26, which Black won in short order:

This trap was given in Irving Chernev's book Winning Chess Traps, first published in 1946. The entire game appears, for example, in Chernev and Reinfeld's The Fireside Book of Chess (1949), as well as in more recent works such as the Encyclopedia of Chess Miniatures (2014) and Müller and Knaak's 222 Opening Traps After 1.d4 (2008). It is scarcely believable that Kasparov did not know of this old chestnut. Even if he somehow did not, it is mind-blowing that so great a tactical genius could miss so obvious a shot.

The rarely-sprung trap

1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 e6?! 4.c4 Bb4+?? is an ingenious but bad way of playing Alekhine's Defense. It is seen 19 times in Mega Database 2013. Some good players had White, including the Filipino GM and former Candidate Eugenio Torre, and two other players rated over 2300. In 16 of those games, White played 5.Bd2; in the other three, he played 5.Nd2. In none of the games did White play 5.Ke2!, winning a piece, since after either 5...Nb6 6.c5 or 5...Ne7 6.a3, Black's bishop is trapped and will be lost. White, modestly rated 1197, did find the sockdolager (as the old-time writers liked to say) in the below correspondence game, presumably aided by the greater time available for reflection.

This game is from Karsten Müller and Rainer Knaak's book 222 Opening Traps After 1.e4, p. 18. I first learned of this trap in Tim Krabbé's wonderful Open Chess Diary (scroll down to No. 381). As I have previously noted, I have myself won with the mirror image of this trap, 1.d4 Nc6 2.d5 Ne5 3.e4 d6 4.f4 Bg4?? 5.Qd2! and Black loses a piece just as in the original version.

GM Karsten Müller annotates endings from Chicago Open

Good stuff on ChessBase.  Don't miss the endgame between GMs Shabalov and Sargissian, beginning at move 75.  (It's hard to win clear first in the Chicago Open unless you win at least one drawn ending!)

I'd just happened to see GM Yermolinsky's instructive comments on the Shabalov-Sargissian game on ICC this past Sunday.  It's the June 3rd entry in Yermo's "Every Russian Schoolboy Knows" series, "Bishop vs. Knight - Part 1."

Endgames from the U.S. Championship and Women's Championship

Karsten Müller annotates two of Viktorija Ni's endgames (and two of Nakamura's) for ChessBase.

That darn Kantorovich/Steckner position

Mark Dvoretsky made the winning technique famous in Dvortesky's Endgame Manual.  But is this practical rook ending a draw after all?

White to play: 

Is 1.Kd4 sufficient to win? 

 Karsten Müller explains in his Chess Cafe column.

Break On Through to the Other Side

White to play

Lu Shanglei - Ji Dan

2010 Chinese Championship, Xinghua

The move is obvious once you see it!  Lu Shanglei shows us how; Karsten Müller annotates for ChessBase.

the eternal duel of bishop vs. knight

I think it was Dmitry Gurevich who compared bishops to dogs and knights to cats....

White to play

Anyway, Chicago's Jeff Caveney and GM Karsten Müller analyze an interesting ending at Chess Cafe. (This link will expire in a month or so, but you should be able to find it in the archives.)

Karsten Müller annotates Shirov-Kramnik

Shirov-Kramnik, Corus 2010

White to play

You can read and play through GM Müller's explanations at ChessBase.  Shirov may only have taken second place, but he played the most spectacular chess at Wijk aan Zee.  Don't try to understand all the moves: just enjoy the fireworks!

Oh yes, this is supposedly a Chicago chess blog....