{"id":22013,"date":"2025-06-02T12:41:17","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T12:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-devil-and-pawn\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:10:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:10:23","slug":"the-devil-and-pawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-devil-and-pawn\/","title":{"rendered":"The devil and pawn"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The renowned French opera composer Fran\u00e7ois-Andr\u00e9 Danican Philidor produced over 20 operas in the mid to late 18th century. He was also the world\u2019s best chess player during this period. A chess opening is named after him along with other chess strategies. A famous chess saying of his is: \u201cPawns: they are the soul of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this week\u2019s position, the pawns face off between the fourth and second ranks. Black\u2019s pawns have penetrated white\u2019s side of the board but white has an extra outside passed pawn. White\u2019s extra outside passed pawn on b2 would likely be decisive in most positions like this.<\/p>\n

However, in the pawn face off on the kingside of the board white mistakenly blinked first with pawn to h3. With this hint please try to find black\u2019s winning move and strategy.<\/p>\n

Black counters white\u2019s threat to its g4 pawn and steals the life from white\u2019s position with pawn to f3. Both white\u2019s h3 and black\u2019s f3 pawns threaten to win a pawn. But black\u2019s pawn would promote in half the number of moves.<\/p>\n

White\u2019s king cannot stop black\u2019s f3 pawn if it captures on g2 after white\u2019s h3 pawn takes black\u2019s g4 pawn. The white king doesn\u2019t reach the black pawn in time. This is because black\u2019s g2 pawn stops the white king from advancing to f1 (see next diagram)<\/p>\n

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

Of course white\u2019s g2 pawn can respond to black pawn f3 by capturing the black pawn. This is met with black\u2019s g4 pawn taking white\u2019s h3 pawn. Black\u2019s new h3 pawn marches cozily to promotion on h1 with white\u2019s g2 pawn out of the way (see next diagram).<\/p>\n

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

If pawns have souls, Philidor might have added, the lesson then is to play the role of the devil and take the life out of your opponent\u2019s game one pawn move at a time.<\/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":22014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22013","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\/22013","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=22013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77545,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22013\/revisions\/77545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22013"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}