The third rank defense is the most important defense in the king and rook versus king, rook and pawn endgame. A lot of people refer to it as the Philidor position, but this name is also used for some other endgame positions.
There is already a lot of information about this position available on the internet, [...]
A classical game between Dr. Thomas Bowdler and Henry Seymour Conway that can be found in the IJ105 database. The reason it became famous was because of Bowdler’s two rook sacrifice, but I’ll show it here for another reason: if you have a material advantage you have to use this material.
1.d4 d5 2.e4 The Blackmar-Diemer Gambit (BDG)
2… dxe4 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.f3 exf3 5.Qxf3
The main line of the BDG continues with 5.Nxf3 Bg4 6.h3 but this time we are going for the Halosar Trap
The game of this lesson between Paul Morphy and Carl Isouard that has been played in Paris 1858 is one of the most famous chess games.
It’s a very interesting short game and it contains at least five important chess lessons:
1. Develop you chess pieces quickly
2. Castling into safety
3. The strategic outpost at d5
4. Attacking a [...]
This position occurred in the game Bird -Steinitz (1866) and Steinitz played the winning move 66…b5+.
Bird reacted with 67.Kc3 and now we get an even more interesting position.
Should you also have played 66…b5+ or would you have tried something like 66…a3?
Are you able to win this won game? What are Black’s next moves?
Be careful. Some [...]