chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

, and particularly in

endgame studies In the game of chess, an endgame study, or just study, is a composed position—that is, one that has been made up rather than played in an actual game—presented as a sort of puzzle, in which the aim of the solver is to find the essentially uniqu ...

, domination occurs when a player controls all movement squares of an enemy piece.

Examples

This position occurred in the game Beliavsky– Korchnoi, György Marx Memorial, 2004. White blundered with 38.Kh2? allowing 38...Qd3 – this dominates the knight: despite having six squares available to it, its capture cannot be avoided. b2, d2, a5 and e5 are guarded by the black bishop, d6 by the black queen, and b6 by the pawn. Additionally, there is no way for the white queen to safely defend it, as every square she could defend it from is guarded by the black queen. The example here is a study by Henri Rinck first published in ''La Stratégie'' in 1920. It is White to play and win. Normally, Black would be able to sacrifice his rook for the white bishop, leaving a drawn position (sacrificing it for a knight would be no good, since it is possible to force mate with bishop and knight), but in this case it turns out that the rook is dominated, and its capture cannot be avoided despite its freedom of movement. The first move of the solution is 1.Nd2, after which all rook moves allow it to be captured or immediately lost to a knight

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tine (structural), tines with which one ...

(1...Re7 2.Nd5+; 1...Re3 2.Nd5+; 1...Rd4 2.Ne6+; 1...Rb4 2.Nd5+) apart from one: 1...Re5. After 2.Nc4 the situation is similar: only 2...Re4 and 2...Rf5 avoid immediate loss of the rook. Whichever Black plays, White continues with 3.Nd6 when only 3...Re5 avoids immediate loss. 4.Bf3 leaves Black completely helpless: once again, all moves allow capture of the rook or a knight fork except 4...Ra5, when after 5.Ne6+ Ke5 6.Nc4+ the rook is finally won. At all stages the rook had wide freedom of movement, and twice it had the maximum number of fourteen squares available to it, yet it could not be saved; it was ''dominated''.

References

External links

Several examples of domination from Kasparyan's book
Chess terminology Chess endgames {{chess-stub

Examples

Further reading

References

External links