{"id":22301,"date":"2025-05-13T15:37:30","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T21:37:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-best-medicine\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:13:02","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:13:02","slug":"the-best-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-best-medicine\/","title":{"rendered":"The best medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Penicillin was discovered because a petri dish was unchecked over the summer of 1928. With this hint in mind please try to find white\u2019s best move.<\/p>\n

In this week\u2019s position, white can win a pawn with its bishop taking black\u2019s f7 pawn, checking black. After black either captures the bishop with its f8 rook or retreats to h8, white\u2019s rook next snatches black\u2019s knight, which is no longer adequately defended. Black can win back a pawn with its rook taking white\u2019s a2 pawn. Here, white\u2019s pieces are better placed and white is up a pawn. Even so, black maintains a reasonable hope of a draw.<\/p>\n

The best move for white is to refrain from the immediate check and have its rook promptly grab black\u2019s knight, even though the rook is ostensibly unguarded. The point is that black must swallow the loss of a whole knight. If black\u2019s queen takes the seemingly free rook, now white\u2019s bishop checks black from f7 (see next diagram).<\/p>\n

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

After black thwarts the check with rook takes bishop, white\u2019s queen takes black\u2019s queen. Black is lost with no reasonable hope of a draw.<\/p>\n

The lesson this week is not checking for a move or two is sometimes the best medicine. Accepting this may be a hard pill to swallow over the board.<\/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":22302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22301","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\/22301","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=22301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77654,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22301\/revisions\/77654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22301"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}