KMKY10: OUCH!

Black to play

A chesser walking into a stalemate from an overwhelming position is a bit like a batsman getting hit in the box. Just as painful and similarly musing to absolutely everybody save for the person on the receiving end.

Stalemate Combinations is the chapter that follows The Use of Traps in Boost Your Chess (KMKY 9). Aside from the sheer fun of it, there’s definitely a practical advantage to studying this stuff.

BYC/F has 11 excellent examples and 12 more in the text exercises.

My favourite is the one where Tal falls into a horrible trap set by a little known (entirely unknown to me) opponent in a blitz game at Leipzig in 1960. Connected to the Olympiad, perhaps.

Anyway. You’re Aaron. You’re Black. You’re going to find something that isn’t forced … but that doesn’t matter because it is going to work.

And you are, I imagine, going to annoy everybody down the club by banging on about it for the rest of your life.