A beautiful and surprising tactical blow

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H

Linn, Gina - Martinovsky, Eugene

0-1, 1988.

[#] 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.g3 dxc4 6.Qa4 Nfd7 7.Bg2 Nc6 8.Qxc4 Nb6 9.Qb3!? Nxd4 10.Nxd4 Bxd4 11.O-O Bg7?! 12.Rd1 Nd7 13.Bxb7!± Rb8 14.Bxc8 Rxb3? Surprisingly the black position is now probably lost. 15.Bxd7 Qxd7 16.Rxd7 Rxc3 White to move and win! 17.Rxe7? This should be enough for a draw, but white had a better move...

[17.Bh6!! When I discovered this move about twenty years ago the computers were obviously not as strong as today. It took quite a while for the chess program to see the tactics, and that made me even more impressed by the beauty of the move. I was actually hoping to use the idea in one of my own games some day, but that will probably never happen. (It is not a very common theme, and besides black usually plays the more solid 5...0-0.)

The main point of the combination is that white is threatening Rad1, defending the rook and intending mate-in-one, while the rook on c3 is still hanging. If black takes white's rook, Bxg7 wins the bishop and regains the rook because of a double threat against the black rooks.

Taking the bishop with 17...Bxh6 is hopeless. After 18.Rad1 black must defend against the mate and white has time to take on c3. The white rooks will soon pick up black's queen side pawns.]

17...Kxe7 18.bxc3 Bxc3 19.Ba3 Kd7 20.Rd1 Kc8 21.Rd3 Ba1 22.Bc5 a6 White is still at least equal but slowly starts to misplay the ending. 23.Re3 Rd8 24.Re7 Rd7 25.e4 Rxe7 26.Bxe7 Kd7 27.Ba3 Kc6 28.f4 Kb5 29.Kf2 Kc4 30.e5 Bd4 31.Kf3 Kd5 32.Bc1 c5 33.Kg4 h5 34.Kg5 Ke6 35.h3 c4 36.g4 hxg4 37.hxg4 c3 38.Kh6 Bf2 39.Kg7 Be1 40.f5 gxf5 41.gxf5 Kxf5 42.Kxf7 Kxe5 43.Ke7 Bd2 44.Ba3 Kd5 45.Kd7 Bf4 [0-1]