{"id":22139,"date":"2025-05-22T23:25:41","date_gmt":"2025-05-22T23:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/look-this-way\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:11:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:11:40","slug":"look-this-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/look-this-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Look this way"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

In the Battle of Cannae (216 B.C.), the Carthaginian General Hannibal deflected the Romans toward the center and then flanked the Romans from behind, encircling the Romans with a devastating attack. Rome\u2019s causalities and losses were roughly 80,000 to Carthage\u2019s 5,500.<\/p>\n

Deflection is a tactic both effective in war and chess. In this week\u2019s position, white deflects black\u2019s defender away from its post, which invites checkmate.<\/p>\n

White\u2019s knight keeps the black king off the g7 square, as white\u2019s light-squared bishop dominates the b3-g8 diagonal. White\u2019s dark-square bishop eyes black\u2019s f6 pawn. But black\u2019s queen guards this pawn and protects black\u2019s back rank (the eighth rank).<\/p>\n

Like lightning from the sky, white\u2019s rook strikes from e8, checking black and forcing black\u2019s queen to abandon its post and capture the rook. White\u2019s dark-square bishop next captures black\u2019s f6 pawn, attacking black\u2019s king. The bishop pair checkmates black (see next diagram).<\/p>\n

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

The point of deflection is to lure or force enemy pieces to bad squares, like when General Washington won the Siege of Yorktown with feints, which fatally diverted the British away from their positions. History shows this tactic is worth looking out for. Just don\u2019t get caught looking the wrong way.<\/p>\n

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

mate in two<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22139","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\/22139","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=22139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77590,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22139\/revisions\/77590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22139"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}