Walnut Creek Quad Nov 2009
“All’s well that ends well” was the motto of the Walnut Creek Quad Tournament Saturday, November 7th 2009. After an initial mix-up regarding the use-permit for the tournament hall, more than 80 boys and girls settled in to a morning of rigorous chess. In addition to many tournament “regulars” who are building up their tournament experience and rating points, a number of children were playing in a rated tournament for the first time, and chess player was playing his first chess tournament in the Bay Area after moving here from Pennsylvania (his dad found the Berkeley Chess School on the web!)
A special thanks goes out to our wonderful volunteers who helped make the tournament a success. Especially worthy of mention is our very own BCS Alumni Alex Cloud, who did a superb job as an Assistant Tournament Director. Thank you Alex and everyone!
Click here to see photos of many of the Quad participants in our photo gallery.
The Berkeley Chess School’s chess instructor and National Master Roger Poehlmann was on-hand to go over everyone’s chess games in the break area, and passed this along as a particularly rich series of moves. Be sure to play through to the elegant and exciting mate with two bishops! (And if there are any moms or dads out there who may need or want to learn chess notation or improve their chess, there is a chess class for adults at the Berkeley Chess School – more information here.)
One Good Check
Diagram 1: (White to play and checkmate in 2 moves)
Joseph (White) is down a rook for a bishop against Michael (Black) in their
final round game. Blacks rooks are both well-placed on open files, but it will be the diagonals that count in this game.
White's best placed piece is the Bg3: it slices through the center and covers the c7
and b8 squares right next to Black's King. When you notice that your opponent's King
has no moves, imagine ways to give a safe check that can't be blocked effectively-it
will be checkmate if you can find one! White can dream of getting his knight to a7,
but it's much too far away.
From Diagram 1, White can use the Qa4 and the Be2 in combination to give "one good
check": 1.Qxc6+! bxc6 2.Bxa6# is a striking diagonal criss-cross checkmate.
Diagram 2: A diagonal criss-cross checkmate that could have happened.
In the game (from Diagram 1), White did not sacrifice his queen on c6-he played a different Queen sacrifice! Joseph played 1.Qxa6? (White gets his "one good check" after 1.bxa6 2.Bxa6# with the same checkmate as in Diagram 2. So why put a question mark on 1.Qxa6? Because it doesn't give check like Qxc6+ does. If you don't check, you give your opponent additional defensive options.) 1.Nb8! (Black wisely declines the Queen sacrifice, and 1.Be5 was an even stronger move.) 2.Qa8 Be5 3.f4! gxf4
(Black has succeeded in clogging up the h2-b8 diagonal, but watch how White constructs another criss-cross checkmate on adjacent diagonals!) 4.Bg4+ Kc7 (Note how the Black King has no moves now? "One good check" will be devastating.) 5.Qa5+ (Diagram 3 shows the Qa5 and Bg4 doing the diagonal criss-cross!) 5.b6 6.Qxb6#
Diagram 3: The criss-cross theme moved down one rank! It's mate next move.
