Treatise on Tactics in Chess - The Decoy - annotated by KlangenFarben

All examples are from recorded games and thus not subject to any copyright law.

The annotations are mine and mine alone, but I will do the right thing and put all original content--and there is no content from a third party in this package--into the public domain. If you do use some it, throw me a bone and mention KlangenFarben.

When discussing tactical themes with students (always a favorite it seems, everyone wants to win brilliantly and quickly. no-one wants to know the basics of how to win a won game), The Decoy provides expresso where most of the other themes offer half-caf/half-decalf. (How many times can one go over The Pin?)

Putting this together, I noticed that in nearly all the cases I considered the decoy, once found, was followed by easy-to-find continuations. The one serious except is the double decoy missed by Chigorin; if he managed to find that move, the game probably would have gone viral and known to the entire chess-playing world by 1900, beating out Reti's study as the first chess piece to go viral in a hard-copy-only world.

Thanks to the Usual Suspects for your support and encouragement, you know who you are.