Once again

This position arose in the 25 minute blitz game in FICS yesterday against 100 hundred rating points lower player than me. I have drifted last days hanging my queen because I thought there was a pin when there de facto wasn't and so on. Hell, in one game I gave my queen just because I didn't notice it was there for the taking and so on.

But anyway even I lost it is always joy to find out afterwards that I had reached a winning or atleast promising position after 36. moves. When in game I made loosing move, there was much stronger move available.

Here's the position.



It is blacks turn to move.

The bad news is. White has a passed pawn on c5 and rook cannot move to c8 because of whites bishop. Black bishop is not able to stop it.

The fact that black king can stop the promotion is so much out of my head that I have spent this afternoon working out blacks best move without realising black can do for a while with moving the king!

After writing the chapter above I begun to wonder if this has to do with recognizing that the game has shifted from middlegame to endgame!? I'm not sure if this is important as good move is good always. But maybe it is in a sense that the concepts that mind should dwell are different. King becomes much more valuable piece than before and pawns become more important - maybe we are in thresholds of endgame in this position?

Anyway: the king move 37...Ke6!? is possible but the best move is simple 37...Rg5!

Mate in two

As the title goes. This is from a game this morning. Not bad game because there are solid choices among dubious ones all the way to the move 30 or so. And now everything was in its right place. It's whites move.
It's mate in two.



I missed it. Lately I have focused pretty much in the opening phase. I wish I get better seeing these kinds of positions clearly. I miscalculate combinations and my mind is not well set. This is what I would like to be better at - among basic pawn endgames, mates and so on.