In The Square of the Pawn

The following King and Pawn ending looks very winning for Black owing to his central pawn duo at e4 and d4. There is a little wrinkle after one observes that White has a protected passed pawn at a5 which is three squares from Queening.

The pawn at a5 forms a square with vertices at the chess squares a5,d5,d8, and a8. As long as the White King remains within this square, the Black passed pawn must remain frozen.

This leads to the formulation of the simple plan of attacking the protecting b4 pawn and destroying the support of White's only hope. Now capturing the b4 pawn with the King would be an egregious blunder as it would land the discombobulated Black King outside the aforementioned quadrangle/square.




So the winning idea is to get the King to b5 which facilitates the pawn dissolving c5 pawn advance leaving two capturable pawns and White's resignation imminent. Incidentally, players of the French Defense are often rewarded after patiently defending with strong central pawns which also sometimes happens in Sicilian Defense games.

Kaalzar from the country of Guadeloupe(a group of Caribbean islands and an overseas region of France) is an uncompromising chess player who would rather lose "his way" than acquiesce to the will of his opponent.

She Deflectively Krushed Him

The position you see with Black to move features Irina Krush(Great surname for a chess player) playing Black in closed Sicilian Defense. Her opponent, Miles Ardaman, has just retreated his Bishop from h6 to the d2 square to prevent Qe1 which would be curtains for White.



Notice that White's sensitive back rank is guarded by the h3 Queen and the aforementioned Prelate.See if you can discover a move that would disrupt the protection of the bank rank. Hint: deflection is a common theme when a piece is overloaded or its dislocation from its protective services leads to disaster.

What do I mean by deflection? Deflection literally means to dislodge a piece from a defensive post by force and often happens via being attacked by an unprotected(hanging) piece.