🧠 Never or Now (Position Exercise)

0:00This is chess visualization with Aiden Raynor. I am Aiden and you're about to solve a chess exercise blind-fold. Focus on understanding each move and each position as you go. Pause and repeat as often as you need to. You've got this. In this position, white has a pawn on H6, a king on H5, and a bishop on F8. Black has a pawn on H7, a king on H8, and a knight on G8. It's white to move. What is the best move? It's

1:13had 8些! Had you go, nice. Quick one, I'm gonna say an easy one because none of this stuff is necessarily easy but at least a quick one for your Monday, well my Monday could be your Sunday. As always, take more time. If you need more time, the answer is coming in three, two, one, the best move for white is Bishop G7 checkmate. Now, how do we spot that? First thing to notice in this position is how clustered in everything is. This is actually an exercise from a little collection I made of four by four exercises where the entire position fits into a four by four grid. Allowing us to really get a sense about everything goes together without having to put distance and like long distance diagonals or any of that kind of stuff. And we can focus on one section of the board

2:16and really get to know what's happening there. The key thing to realize is how clustered everything is. And especially how tied in the black king is, we have to sort of realize that the pawn is directly in front of it, the knight is right next to it. And the key important detail is that the G7 square is protected by the pawn on H6. If you've got those little details in together, then the answer doesn't find itself but that's the core piece to recognize that G7 square even though there's nothing on it is protected by the H6 pawn and it's seen by the F8 bishop. Allowing that bishop to move into G7 safely, hit the king there on H8, doesn't meaningfully change the rest of the square control around the king and it leaves black no options and a checkmate victory for white. Now it's basically the only move here for white as well.

3:17If white gives black a move, let's say they do something like, I don't know, King G5 or something like that. If white gives black a move, black can take that H6 pawn with knight takes H6 and it's gonna be a draw basically by insufficient material. A king and a bishop alone cannot deliver checkmate. So for white, this is their one chance. It's now or never. That's all from me for now. I'll be back tomorrow to learn more about visualization, conceptualization and how to make your adult brain better at the game of chess. Check out my free five day course, at don't move until you see.it. Good work today.