{"id":16988,"date":"2025-08-11T16:20:51","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T22:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/trade-wars\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:03:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:03:32","slug":"trade-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/trade-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Trade wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Trade wars occur on the chess board, too, and not just in politics and economics. With this hint in mind please try to find black\u2019s best move in this week\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

The white bishop on g5 is without financial backing, as black\u2019s e7 bishop and queen have a concealed battery targeting the white g5 bishop. This allows black\u2019s knight to capture white\u2019s e4 pawn, which will generate revenue of the form of a pawn over the next several trades.<\/p>\n

White has several trade options. Inferior is knight takes knight on e4. Black then trades bishops on g5 and the black queen seizes the g5 square. Black has won a pawn, as the black queen pins the g2 pawn and threatens bishop to h3 (see next diagram).<\/p>\n

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

White should first trade knights on c6. Black must recapture because of the threat to black\u2019s queen. This is followed by trading bishops on e7 as the black queen recaptures on e7 (see next diagram).<\/p>\n

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

Because white\u2019s knight on c3 helps its queen guard white\u2019s bishop on e2, the bishop exchange on e7 forces white to trade knights on e4, or else the rook-queen battery wins white\u2019s bishop. After the knight trade on e4, white\u2019s bishop attacks the black queen from f3 and eyes black\u2019s weak c6 pawn. Black\u2019s queen moves to c4 and saves the pawn.<\/p>\n

Black will soon move its a8 rook so it is not to be in the line of fire of white\u2019s bishop. When the dust settles, white will have a trade deficit of one pawn.<\/p>\n

The lesson this week is that winning a trade war is complicated and requires precise calculation.<\/p>\n

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

black\u2019s best move?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-16988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16988","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=16988"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20502,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16988\/revisions\/20502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16988"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=16988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}