{"id":21638,"date":"2025-06-30T19:55:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T01:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/spacehog\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:08:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:08:11","slug":"spacehog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/spacehog\/","title":{"rendered":"Spacehog"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

This past weekend Farmington hosted the Four Corners Open. Dennis Dyer of Albuquerque defeated Jack Maynes of Durango in the final round to win the tournament. This week\u2019s position is based on that game.<\/p>\n

In a tense endgame battle, Maynes missed an opportunity to win a pawn and secure a decisive advantage. Maynes was white; Dyer, black. In a previous move, Maynes exchanged his b5 pawn for black\u2019s a6 pawn instead of advancing the b5 pawn to b6. If he had, it would have illustrated an important endgame theme of offering a sacrifice to promote an advanced pawn. With this hint in mind, please try to find white\u2019s best move.<\/p>\n

Here, black threaten to win the b6 pawn with the support of its bishop. White turns the tables, however, with knight to c6 (see next diagram).<\/p>\n

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

White\u2019s knight threatens black\u2019s bishop. If black takes the knight with its b7 pawn, white\u2019s b6 pawn advances to b7 and cannot be prevented from promoting. Alternatively if black takes the knight with its bishop, white\u2019s d5 pawn recaptures. Now, either white\u2019s b6 or c6 pawn will promote (see next diagram)<\/p>\n

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

White\u2019s c6 pawn is poised to capture black\u2019s b7 pawn and then promote. Stopping the c6 pawn, however, allows white\u2019s b6 pawn to march unscathed to b8.<\/p>\n

Black\u2019s best move after knight to c6 is to move its king to e8, guarding the bishop. White trades its knight for black\u2019s d8 bishop and then trades pawns on c7. Next, white\u2019s bishop snatches black\u2019s g7 pawn.<\/p>\n

White has a positional edge and an extra pawn. Because of the opposite colored bishops, black may still draw with imprecise play by white.<\/p>\n

The irony of Maynes\u2019 error is that he used to be in a band called Spacehog, named after grabbing more space on the board. The lesson is that in an endgame that is relatively even, pawn penetration into your opponent\u2019s space can later pay big dividends.<\/p>\n

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

white\u2019s best move?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-21638","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\/21638","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=21638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77394,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21638\/revisions\/77394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21638"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=21638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}