Horde World Championship Highlights (Part 1)

In these days, the Horde Chess World Championship of Lichess is taking place. I bring you the most interesting, cool, and teaching games and positions from there. This is part 1, which concludes the first 2 rounds of the competition. You can see all of the games on a website specifically prepared for this, Follow the Horde World Championship.

Openings

In the game Whitedancingrockstar – db1000c, after the opening moves

1. d5 e6 2. d4 exd5 3. cxd5 a5 4. e5 d6 5. e4 Nd7

White tried the brave and rare move 6. b6! The idea is to capture on d6 in case of 6… c:b6. The game continued 6… d:e5 7. b:c7 Q:c7 8.f:e5 N: e5 9. d:e5 Q:e5

Which looks good for white.

Middlegame play

We can see a neat and elegant implementation of the intrusion tactic in the game GlenGratz – ReallyWayTooBad, from move 23:

Black played 23… Nc6, eyes to make an intrusion through the a file. After 24. b:c6 B:c6 25. h4 Ke7 26. h3 Rga8 27.c4

The intrusion can finally begin. 27… B:a4 28. b:a4 (28. b4 could be better as it lets the free b-file pawn survive) 28… R:a4 29. f5 R:a3 30. b:a3 R:a3

Black finally got an intrusion with his rook. However, the cost turned out to be too heavy as white managed to arrange a strong counter-attack and win.

A great tactic for kingside intrusion was performed in the game Chess_Attack_Juras – hritic333, move 25:

Black, instead of doing the obvious 25… R:h4, saved time and pieces with 25… B:h3! 26. g:h3 Qd7

Now after 27. g4 R:h4 or 27. d5 Q:h3, black got a good positioning inside white’s pawns.

Engames

In the game sanju1973 – osu5nc from the first round, the following position achieved:

White managed to trap black’s king, leaving the queen to handle all of the pawns on the queenside. Black can win this position, but it is a big challenge to figure out how – Try it yourself!

Jus_Jacome managed to rescue a draw in his game against MiroMiljkovic by using stalemate hacking, with no less than 4 pawns, stacked one after the other.

62.b6, and black is forced to capture the pawn while some of the other ones still exist.

A precise application of pawn storm was played by Chess_Attack_Juras, in the game Chess_Attack_Juras – hritic333:

After black’s last move, 39… Ne7, White found a way to win with 40. d6!, aiming 41. d7+ with 42. f7. This move gave him the win, with computer analysis reveals that there is a forced checkmate in 16 moves for white.

Another game in the same match gave us a rare view of 2 black queens struggles against 11 pawns, which I find pretty fascinating.

In the end of the game osu5nc – kubalibre420, white faced a threat on his queenside pawns:

As a protective measure, he played the foreseeing move 48. e5!, so after 48… B:c6 49. d:c6 R:c6 50.d7

The promotion of the pawns is inevitable.

This is so far, looking forward to the next rounds to see and write about more high-quality Horde Chess games. Stay tuned!