after a rough mouse slip in the opening, you were forced into unfamiliar territory-- learning a lot, but losing an exchange, which quickly turned into a full rook. but you kept fighting-- and while your opponent is up a rook, it's sequestered with their other heavy pieces in the back rank. were your blunders merely sacrifices in disguise?
white to move.
fr this was a bad game for me
Click to see solution
The first thing you might see is that we can maybe force a perpetual check, a result we would be happy with. But think bigger, and ask your pieces where they would rather be.
Our bishop is unhappy, even though it's supporting our powerful pawn-- and at first glance, I don't know where it would rather be. On the other hand, we realize our queen is happy ensnaring the black king in a mating net. If we try to complete the mating net, we come to understand where our bishop wants to live-- e6, delivering the nail in the coffin of the black king!
How to get it there? We don't have the time or resources to push d5-- but, aha, our queen is protecting h3. And what's more, the move comes with a tempo on the black queen! Indeed, if we play Bh3 threatening both mate and the queen capture, the most challenging moves black can muster involve trading the queen for a bishop (I like Rd6 or Qh3). Even though white isn't that far ahead by point value, white has the initiative and the geometry advantage-- the queen is given full access to an open board full of hanging pieces, with any number of intermezzo checks that give it basically unlimited access to any square it wants. No calculation is necessary to be certain that a winning fork will reveal itself.
In the game I played Bh3, and black played Rd7, which fails to Bf7+. I didn't notice that I could seal the deal with Qg6+ afterward, but the damage is done, and black resigned within five moves after a flurry of swoopy queen moves led to their rook being gobbled.
This is the only winning move, but there are several draws in the position if you don't find it. Rxf6 (exchanging in hopes of a draw) looks intuitive to me but is stopped by Qc1+ forcing a queen trade-- but we can take the sting out of Qc1+ with the zwischenzug Qg6+.
