Lessons From Kenilworth

THE following position was reached in my round-one game from the English 65+ championship.

Black has just played 23...Qe6-g6

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White is a pawn up but faces multiple threats, the most dangerous of which is 24...Qxg2#.

Clearly the extra pawn is going to have to be given back, but the question is, how to do it in such a way that minimises the damage?

24.Qf1? prevents mate, but the queen becomes passive, and after 24...Nxh3+ the white king is forced from cover.

Stockfish16 and Komodo14.1 reckon 24.Ne1!? and 24.Ne3 both leave the position completely equal, but the latter is the more-human move, improving a badly placed piece as well as attending to the main threat.

Instead I played 24.g3?, which is easily the worst move of the lot.

Black could reply 24...Nxh3+ with a large advantage, but even better is ignoring the threat to the black knight and instead playing 24...Qxe4.

After the further moves 25.gxf4 Qxf3 material was level, but White had a knight and two pawns en prise, and the white king was badly exposed.

LESSON: Wilhelm Steinitz taught that, when under pressure (I am paraphrasing), the defender should make as few concessions as possible. If one move (here 24.Ne3) both deals with the chief danger and improves the position of a piece, while having no obvious drawback, there need to be very good reasons to reject it in favour of another option.