07 August 2025

Bishop vs. Knight

This week is Inland Chess Academy's annual August Youth Chess Camp and I'm teaching three sessions each of the three days.

My first session on Tuesday covered a few situations where a bishop or knight was a poor piece, such as a bishop's ineptitude when it does not control the promotion square of an a- or h-pawn. We also looked at some games where a good minor piece was able to dominate its rival.

The first position was from a game I played on Lichess seven years ago. 

White to move
White knew that Black's h-pawn had no future and quickly reached a textbook draw with 53.Nf7 Ke4 54.Nxd6+ Bxd6 55.Kg1 Kxd5 and there were thirty moves of shuffling as Black tried to run White's remaining 48 seconds down to zero. It was futile. Black had less time and White knew how to hold the draw. The game was drawn by repetition after move 86.

Another somewhat more difficult position comes from a game that I annotated in "Excelling at Technical Chess" 14 years ago, a game that is memorable both because I played reasonably well and because it was my revenge after I lost to my opponent in 20 moves a few months earlier.

White to move
I had plenty of time, but perhaps was rushing things because my opponent was short of time.

56.Be2 traps the knight and I should have won quickly. Instead, 

56.g4?? Nf3 57.Kf4 Nd4 58.Kg3 Ne6 59.Bf5 Ng7 60.Bc8

Black to move
My opponent erred in this position, returning the advantage I had squandered earlier. Twenty moves later, he resigned.

What would you play if you had Black here?