{"id":22205,"date":"2025-05-18T22:29:03","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T22:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cut-a-rug\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:11:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:11:43","slug":"cut-a-rug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cut-a-rug\/","title":{"rendered":"Cut a rug"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

On the chess board, the bishop pair is like the legendary dancing pair Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers. Together, the bishops can dance across the floor and deliver checkmate with their dancing master, the king. This is a useful mating pattern to know. This week\u2019s position illustrates this pattern. Please find white\u2019s mate in three.<\/p>\n

The black king is cornered and white\u2019s bishops range free over the board like birds. The only square the black king can move to is g8. White prepares a two check mate by first keeping its bishop off c4, which targets g8 and stalemates black (see next diagram).<\/p>\n

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

White must then allow black to move its king to g8 and prepare a check along the a2-g8 diagonal with the light-squared bishop. This leaves several wining options for white\u2019s bishop. Any square along one of two diagonals, excepting the c4 square, win: the f1-a6 diagonal and the d1-g4 diagonal.<\/p>\n

After black\u2019s king moves to g8, white\u2019s bishop checks black along the a2-g8 diagonal. Black\u2019s king is forced back to h8. White\u2019s dark-squared bishop then delivers the fatal two check dance to black\u2019s king (see next diagram).<\/p>\n

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

The week was a dance lesson in how to cut a rug, as they used to say in the 1920s and 30s.<\/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":22206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22205","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\/22205","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=22205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77616,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22205\/revisions\/77616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22205"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}