Lasker Open Round 3: Painful oversights and lucky escapes

Chess Tournaments

The third round of the Lasker Open concluded Monday night with John and me fighting our match.
The first game started with an opening blunder can you spot how John could have punished me on move 9?


The position after 9. e4??
Hamlet faced Russel in his first game here and he was lucky to escape in game 1. In the diagram position below Russel threatened mate with 38. … Rg1 and after 39. Rc2 exd5 it was Hamlet who had the mating attack. Do you see how Russel could have built a deadly mating net with his 38th move?


David and Reagan reached the following position after a tough fight:


Reagan just played Kc3xc4. Kc2 didn’t offer much hope either. How should white continue?
Friday we meet for round 4 you can find pairings and standings here.

  1. Laura Nyström

    dxe4 after move 9 in first example???

    1. Axel Müller

      This happened in the game. Bb4 attacks the knight on c3. I can’t move it because then dxe4 is a fork. You can see the game with some analysis at the bottom of the post.

  2. David Faulkner

    From German we have the Chess Terms Zugzwang and Zwischenzug… Is there an expression in German for “Chess Blindness”? If this had been a puzzle on the internet I probably would not have missed this… 🙁

    1. Axel Müller

      Yes, there is, it’s Schachblindheit. I’m pretty sure you spot this 99 times out of a 100. But sometimes, it seems, we forget to look and think when we are playing a game.

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