Welcome to our last installment in analysis of Ehlvest-Nedev from the World Senior Championship.
We will finish analyzing some variations that remained hidden in the background, after Ehlvest played the brilliant pawn break 20.e4-e5!
In the actual game, Black understood that the e5 pawn was poisoned, and declined to take it – Ehlvest had an excellent position which he later converted. But our focus remains on the variations that justify the pawn break e5 – without understanding them, the move couldn’t be played.
We saw the refutation of 20…dxe5 last time. Then I asked you how White wins after 20…Bxe5 21.Bxe5 Rxe5, with the following position.
If you’ve been going through all the variations, you probably noticed the recurrence of a theme from the previous line: 22.Rxf7! shatters Black’s defenses. Since Black’s dark squared bishop has been eliminated in this line, he has no choice but to remove the intruder. 22…Kxf7 23.Qh7+ (this move again) 23…Kf6 (other moves get mated immediately) 24.Qxh6+ Kf7 25.Qh7+ Kf6 forces White to find one last nice move.
26.Bh5! weaves a mating net around the Black king. There is no good defense against the threat of mate on f7. For example 26…Qf8 27.Qxd7 (threatening Rf1+) with a winning attack for White, who is barely even down on material at this point.
Taking a step back, I think the big pattern to take away from this example is the e4-e5 pawn break, justified by the variations with Rxf7!, shattering Black’s kingside. They remained hidden in the background, but were fundamental to White’s idea.