{"id":14177,"date":"2026-01-02T10:52:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T17:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-wizard\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:43:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:43:38","slug":"the-wizard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-wizard\/","title":{"rendered":"The wizard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/p>

This December, Magnus Carlsen won both the World Chess Championship in Rapid and Blitz time controls. Rapid is a game played in 15 minutes with a 10\u2011second increment; Blitz, a game played in 3 minutes with a 2\u2011second increment. Carlsen has also been the world\u2019s top\u2011rated player since 2010 and has accumulated 20 world championship titles.<\/p>\n

In the Blitz finals match, Carlsen demonstrated his renowned endgame technique against Nodirbek Abdusattorov and won. This week\u2019s position is from their final game. Carlsen is black; Abdusattorov, white. Here, black needs to promote a pawn or weave a checkmate to win. How did Carlsen do this?<\/p>\n

White\u2019s king is ominously close to black\u2019s pawn. If white advances a pawn and opens up g4 for the king, white\u2019s king will catch black\u2019s pawn in time. Thus, Carlsen played knight to g5. The white king cannot capture the knight because then the black pawn promotes. Critically, the knight pushes the white king away from the pawn and forces the king to move to e3. Black next advances the pawn to h3 (see next diagram).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/p>

The white king now must stay at most two steps away from the pawn to catch it in time. This forces the white king to move back to the \u201cf\u201d file. After king to f2, black\u2019s king encroaches and moves to d2. The white king tries to hold the line on the \u201cf\u201d file and moves to f1. Black replies with king to e3 (see next diagram).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/p>

This forces the white king to retreat to g1. Black\u2019s king next moves to e2, triggering a series of subtle maneuvering. The white king is forced back to h1 and black moves the king to f1 (not f2, as timing is important). Again, white has no choice and must move the king to h2. Black now moves to f2 and white\u2019s king shuffles back to h1.<\/p>\n

The timing of moving to f1 instead of f2 earlier pays off, as black\u2019s king moves to g3, forcing white\u2019s king to move to g1. This allows black to check white with pawn to h2 (see next diagram).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/p>

The white king cannot move to f1 because the black pawn will promote, so the king crawls back into the corner on h1. It is almost stalemate, but not quite, as now black\u2019s knight hops to e4 with an eye to jumping to f2, mating white. White is not stalemated because the pawn moves to g5 and black mates with knight to f2 (see next diagram).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/p>

Carlsen is widely considered the best chess player of all time. Evenly balanced endgames that top players and even computers assess as drawn are often lost when Carlsen is the opponent \u2013 he even recently defeated ChatGPT in a game. The evidence is indisputable: Carlsen is indeed a wizard.<\/p>\n

Reach Eric Morrow at ericmorrowlaw@gmail.com<\/a> or (505) 327-7121.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

move and win<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14178,"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-14177","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\/14177","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=14177"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19369,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14177\/revisions\/19369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14177"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=14177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}