Advancing Kingside Pawns
Submitted by
on Sat, 09/20/2008 at 2:02pm.
After the 26th move, white has advantages in this game. His rooks are on open files, whereas one of mine is tucked away on the f file. I play Rc2, threatening mate in two. Rather than keeping his King safely tucked away behind his pawns, he decided to advance them to stop the threat. He starts by playing 28. f3. This allows me to threaten mate on g2. Then, another pawn must be moved to prevent that mate. And so that game goes on. Eventually, black cannot threaten mate, but black should have tried to swap one of the rooks off, which would have prevented mate, and kept the game alive. I believe that if white had played Qa7 on move 28, or Rc1 on his last move, then the outcome of the game might have been different. The moral of the story is not to advance the pawns around your King forward when staving off mate threats, as it weakens all of the pawns around it.