{"id":15666,"date":"2025-11-17T09:57:02","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T16:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-cup-is-half-full\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:49:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:49:38","slug":"the-cup-is-half-full","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-cup-is-half-full\/","title":{"rendered":"The cup is half-full"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/figure>\n
White to move and win<\/div>\n

The World Cup in India this November is one of the most important chess tournaments of the year. That\u2019s because the top three finishers qualify for three of the eight spots in the 2026 Candidates Tournament, which determines the challenger to the reigning world champion.<\/p>\n

The two Americans who have already qualified \u2014 Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana \u2014 are not competing in the World Cup.<\/p>\n

The tournament started with 206 players and is now down to the final eight. The only American remaining among them is Sam Shankland, who defeated Russia\u2019s Daniil Dubov in the previous round to advance.<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s position is from one of their match games. Shankland is white; Dubov, black. Here Shankland lured Dubov\u2019s king away from its pawns so one of Shankland\u2019s pawns could promote to a queen. With this hint in mind, please try to find white\u2019s winning plan.<\/p>\n

Black has twice as many pawns. Even so, white is materially even because of a rook-over-knight advantage. But that advantage and black\u2019s numerical superiority are trumped by white\u2019s passed pawn on h6 after Shankland uncorked a one-two punch.<\/p>\n

First, white\u2019s rook takes black\u2019s knight. The black king must retake the rook. Now comes the knockout blow with pawn to f6 (see next diagram).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

If black does not take white\u2019s f6 pawn, white captures the g7 pawn and promotes next move. Alternatively, accepting the f6 pawn sacrifice clears the path for white\u2019s h6 pawn. Or, if black plays pawn to g6, white\u2019s h6 advances past the exchange and promotes. White\u2019s pawn promotes, then cleans up and wins. Dubov resigned after pawn to f6.<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s lesson: The cup is always half-full.<\/p>\n

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

to move and win The World Cup in India this November is one of the most important chess tournaments of the year. That\u2019s because the top three finishers qualify for three of the eight spots in the 2026 Candidates Tournament, which determines the challenger to the reigning world champion. The two Americans who have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15667,"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-15666","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\/15666","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=15666"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19778,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15666\/revisions\/19778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15666"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=15666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}