Find A Fracture In Your Opponent's Position
There are three things you can watch forever: fire burning, water falling, and movies with Sir Anthony Hopkins. The psychological thriller "Fracture" was a big blockbuster in 2007. A very smart screenplay coupled with brilliant performances by Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling makes it a must-watch movie. Here is one of my favorite moments:
I really like this quote:
"I found a flaw in every single one of them—you know, thin places in the shell; fine, hairline cracks. You look closely enough, you'll find that everything has a weak spot where it can break, sooner or later."
If you are wondering what this has to do with chess, pay attention to the most relevant part: everything has a weak spot where it can break, sooner or later... including your opponent's position! Therefore, your goal as a chess player is to find such cracks.
A natural question then would be how to find fractures in your opponent's position. This is what we are going to discuss in this article.
There is no need to discuss the obvious fact that solving Chess.com puzzles would improve your tactical skills. What should be discussed though is how to maximize the benefits from solving these puzzles. Let's take the following one as an example:
Hopefully, you have easily solved this puzzle. But after you finish it, don't rush for the next one; instead, try to figure out the mechanism of the combination that made it work.
It is easy to see that in the initial position, the two pawns guarding the king were protected only by the king himself. Meanwhile, each of them was attacked once by the rook on b7 and the queen on f5, and therefore we have the equilibrium where attack and defense are balanced.
But such a delicate balance can be easily broken, and so we have fine, hairline cracks as discussed above by Ted Crawford (played by Anthony Hopkins). Let's change the position a bit and the combination is not going to work anymore:
As you can see, the h7-pawn was protected twice and attacked only once, so it was not a potential crack anymore, and therefore White's combination failed. Therefore, our goal is to constantly look for the squares around the opponent's king that are attacked at least the same number of times as they are defended. While such squares don't guarantee a combination, they are the cracks that can potentially lead to serious fractures.
Here is a very recent example from a game between GMs Hans Niemann and Ivan Cheparinov:
You can read detailed annotations to the game, as well as the controversy around the tournament, in this article. Is it difficult for a young and upcoming 2600+ grandmaster to calculate such a sacrifice? I don't think so. Besides, many experienced players would make such a sacrifice based purely on intuition, because "it's just gotta work!" Also, don't forget that since Niemann modestly compared himself to GM Bobby Fischer, he had to know this iconic game of the American genius:
Some of our readers will probably ask how it is possible to talk about attacks and sacrifices in chess without mentioning games by "The Magician." Yes, you are absolutely correct, it is impossible. When GM Mikhail Tal played the following game he was just 14 years old. By the way, notice the same mechanics as in Niemann's game: the Qb6 and a knight going to e3 (in this game from the d5 square, in Niemann's game from the g4 square) cooperate very well after the sacrifice on f2:
Here is a little test for our readers. Play through the following famous game of the first world champion and find a moment where he could have played much stronger using cracks in Black's position:
I am sure that it was a piece of cake for you after you saw Tal's game above. So, this is how Steinitz could have decided the game as early as move 9!
I hope you got the main point of this article: everything has a weak spot where it can break, sooner or later. So, look for the cracks!
