{"id":13354,"date":"2026-02-23T12:42:34","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T19:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-trojan-pawn\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:36:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:36:25","slug":"the-trojan-pawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-trojan-pawn\/","title":{"rendered":"The Trojan pawn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=a6e4c4ce-2f96-5a74-83f2-140f05f8758a&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1200\" alt=\"\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>Magnus Carlsen won his 21st World Championship title this month, winning the International Chess Federation\u2019s first official Freestyle Chess Championship. In freestyle chess, the starting position involves shuffling the pieces randomly on the first and eighth ranks.<\/p>\n<p>This week\u2019s position is from Carlsen\u2019s game against Javokhir Sindarov. Carlsen is white; Sindarov, black. In chess, it\u2019s good to be giving, especially when it bites off the hand that accepts. With this hint in mind, try to find white\u2019s winning pseudo gift.<\/p>\n<p>White\u2019s pawn is on the verge of promotion, but black\u2019s rook keeps its eye safely on the pawn. Nevertheless, the pawn promotes, and black\u2019s rook snatches the new queen. White\u2019s rook then captures black\u2019s b7 pawn (see next diagram).<\/p>\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image naviga-align-left alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=78e2baaa-796c-548c-b9a0-d0d3792a9d10&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1202\" alt=\"\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>The white pawns corral the black king as the white rook delivers checkmate.<\/p>\n<p>Black could have declined the Trojan pawn. White, however, would then easily overpower black with its new queen.<\/p>\n<p>The lesson this week is that in chess, the best gifts are the ones wrapped in poison. In that sense, Carlsen is often very generous.<\/p>\n<p><em id=\"emphasis-6ed45c205912d54f22902ace6157c62d\">Reach Eric Morrow at <a href=\"mailto:ericmorrowlaw@gmail.com\">ericmorrowlaw@gmail.com<\/a> or (505) 327-7121.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>move and win<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13355,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1091,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-13354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-columns","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13354"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18935,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13354\/revisions\/18935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13354"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=13354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}