![\"kaugars](\"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/kaugars-5.jpg\")
<\/a>Position after 34. Qa4. Black to move.<\/em><\/p>\nFEN: 5k2\/6pp\/p4bq1\/2Pp4\/Q1nP4\/5N2\/Pr3BPP\/2R3K1 b – – 0 34<\/p>\n
Black (Kaugars) had blundered a pawn a few moves ago, and this led White (Mike) to become overconfident and a little bit sloppy. I think that he is quite a different player today than he was in 1993. One of Mike’s maxims today is that when you are winning or ahead, your first job is to take away all of your opponent’s counterplay. But that isn’t the way he played back then, and you can see that he has allowed Kaugars a tremendous amount of compensation: a rook on the seventh rank, a queen casting her baleful eye on the g2 pawn, and two active minor pieces. How can Kaugars exploit these advantages?<\/p>\n
The answer is the move 34. … Ne3!<\/strong>, which Mike says “was a complete shock to me.” It shouldn’t have been such a shock, because this is what happens when you let your opponent have such active pieces. But psychologically, Mike was already chalking this game up as a win, and was not paying as much attention as he should have. Now, unexpectedly, he is in a fight for his life.<\/p>\n It would have been easy for White to go wrong here. For instance, 35. Ne1?<\/span> loses to 35. … Rxf2! 36. Kxf2 Ng4+<\/span>. The main point is that 37. Kg1 Qh6!<\/span> threatens both check on h2 and the rook on c1. Loose pieces drop off!<\/p>\n Mike passed the first test: he played 35. g3!<\/strong>, the best defense. Now Kaugars played 35. … Qe4<\/strong>, and White\u00a0seems to be\u00a0in desperate straits. He can’t defend the knight on f3, and he can’t move it because of mate on g2 or the rook sac on f2. Mike finds an amazing solution, which is based on the idea of treating his knight and bishop as if they were already dead. The trouble for Black is that it takes some time to clear out all this dead wood and get to White’s king! That gives White time to turn his “berserker pawn” into a queen.<\/p>\n 36. c6!! …<\/strong><\/p>\n (See diagram.)<\/p>\n FEN: 5k2\/6pp\/p1P2b2\/3p4\/Q2Pq3\/4nNP1\/Pr3B1P\/2R3K1 b – – 0 36<\/p>\n This move was Mike’s “shining moment,” which appears to turn a loss into a victory, like a hail-Mary three-pointer at the buzzer. The first point is that if Black threatens mate in one with 36. … Qxf3?,<\/span><\/span> then White’s queen arrives just in the nick of time with 37. Qa3+! Ke8 38. Qxe3+ Qxe3 39. Bxe3<\/span>. It’s not clear that White is winning here, because the c-pawn is now a little bit weak, but at least White has all the winning chances.<\/p>\n The much more difficult question is what White will do after 36. … Rxf2?<\/strong>, which is in fact what Kaugars played in the game. Mike says that he worked out all the following variations before his 35th move. He spent more than thirty minutes on that move, and he writes that “The analysis was the deepest and most complicated I have ever had to do in my\u00a0entire playing career.”<\/p>\n But there’s one thing that Mike missed! And Kaugars, too. In the above position Black is still winning! I’ll give you lots and lots of space to think about it. I am quite certain that I would never have found the winning move without a computer.<\/p>\n (lots of space)<\/p>\n (Don’t peek! Think!)<\/p>\n (more space)<\/p>\n Okay, here is the computer move:<\/p>\n 36. … Kf7!!!!<\/span><\/p>\n Yes, you read that right. Four exclamation points!<\/p>\n I am not joining the Brian Wall School of Annotating, in which every move gets liberally festooned with three, four, five, six exclamation points. When you throw around that many exclamation points, they become devoid of meaning. It’s like when some Internet troll posts a comment in all capital letters.<\/p>\n Here is what I mean by four exclamation points.<\/p>\n ! = An outstanding move.<\/p>\n !! = A brilliant move, far beyond the ordinary in at least one of these attributes: courage, depth, breadth, originality, subtlety, beauty, unexpectedness.<\/p>\n !!! = A one-in-a-million move. This means, literally, that if an average game lasts about 40 moves, a “triple exclam” should happen once in every 25,000 master games. Maybe we should be even more picky than that;\u00a0a triple exclam\u00a0should be the best human<\/em> move of the year, in any given year.<\/p>\n !!!! = A superhuman move. This is a move that can only be thought of by a computer. By definition, it can never take place during a game between humans, and can appear only in the annotations.<\/p>\n To me, 36. … Kf7 is one of the best candidates I have ever seen for a superhuman move. Here both sides are attacking like maniacs and every tempo is critical. Black is only a couple tempi away from checkmating White. White is only a couple tempi away from queening his pawn. And in the midst of this chaos, Black takes a tempo… to move his king! There’s something James Bond-ian about it; it’s as if he’s in a burning building and stops to smoke a cigarette (perhaps lighting it from the flames that are shooting out of the walls).<\/p>\n So, having said that, what is the point of 36. … Kf7? Well, Black sees that he is vulnerable to checks on a3 and also on the back rank, so he steps out of the way of both of them\u00a0in advance. Why does that help him? The main point is that if White continues with 37. Qa3<\/span> (not check!) Black will play 37. … Re2!!<\/span> (not f2). And now White has no way to stop the two-move checkmate, … Qxf3 followed by … Qg2 mate, except to sacrifice the queen. But sacrificing the queen is okay if you’re going to get another one back! So we continue: 38. Qxe3!! Rxe3 39. c7<\/span> (forget about taking on e3, because the rook on c1 would fall) Re2 40. c8Q Qxf3<\/span> (diagram).<\/p>\n<\/a>Position after 36. c6. Black to move.<\/em><\/p>\n