A Nice Tactic

This came up in a recent game I played.

  1. Bxf5!

White to Play and Win

At first I wasn’t going to post the answer, but it’s pretty easy at some level of chess proficiency.

  1. fxe5 also wins.

Granted there are multiple ways to win, but that only wins a knight.
Bxf5 Qf6
fxe5 Qxe5
Nxg7+ Qxg7
Bxc8
instead trades a knight and a pawn each (reducing black’s counter-play) plus wins a whole rook.

Maybe, but the OP didn’t ask what the best line of play was. fxe5 satisfies the requirement of “White to play and win.”

I didn’t want to gloat, but after I took the pawn with my bishop, my opponent immediately resigned. All things considered, I thought it was a nice tactic.

I said white to play and win, and I thought the move I did in the game was the best move I could find, and better than immediately taking the knight.

I don’t bother putting my games through a chess engine. No point in it at my level. Although occasionally I’ll have an engine ponder a specific position in a game if it was a spot where I couldn’t find any decent moves at all other than neutral or feeling like I’m in zugzweig.

My definition of a neutral move is something that doesn’t help your defense and most certainly doesn’t do anything helpful in an offensive capacity. Just a move to make and cross your fingers it’s not a bad move. :open_mouth:

For anybody that’s wondering why Bxf5 is such a good move is that black can’t take the bishop without white’s knight forking black’s King and Queen. Like I mentioned, for most chess players, the knight fork is obvious, but for lower level players, that tactic might seem pretty cool.

When I’m using some of my tactics software, there are often more than one winning line, but the purpose is to find the best tactic. If I choose a winning tactic, but not the best tactic, the program will award some partial points for selecting a good tactic, but not the best tactic.

Bxf5 is the type of decoy tactic that human players will jump at for it aesthetic quality even if there is an allegedly better move that a computer might find. Once you see that this works, there is not much point at looking at anything else if you are in a tournament game. In your leisure at home, you can find other moves. The key thing is to “see” the move and sense its power. I will bet that the OP heart leaped when he saw the move. Don’t discount emotion in analysis. It is part of evaluation, too. Some players play for points, others for beauty. Nice shot.