Finish Your Attack Before Starting a New One

Welcome to a new Hivechess lecture, and we will be looking at a new lesson that talks about Finish Your Attack Before Starting a New One. It takes more than just attacking in chess to win a game, at least from what I have gathered. It takes finishing an attack to win a game, in the sense that it amounts to something. In this lecture, I decided to go a bit close to home with the African Individual Chess Championship, where two of Nigeria's strong players are participating in the event: FM Olisa, Tennyson Ewomazino, and FM Abdulraheem Abdulrahman Akintoye.

Although the game I will be using in today's lecture is between Heskiel Ndahangwapo and Bilel Bellahcene. The opening employed is the Sicilian Defense, Kalashnikov Variation, where white played the opening pretty well, fighting for activity and pushing for the win.

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 e5 5. Nb5 d6 6. N1c3 a6 7. Na3 Be6 8. Bc4 b5 9. Bd5 Rc8

The opening is one with an interesting choice of bringing the knight back to the starting spot to reroute it again. That is what the computer engine recommends at this point, but white went for the option of Bxc6.

The computer refers to the choice of Bxc6 as inferior for white because of the activation of the black rook. In openings like this, it leads to the popular rook for knight sac for activity, especially when black is better placed. In this position, it can not work yet since black still has more pieces to bring out on the kingside.

Without wasting much time, let us look at the point where white went ahead to launch another attack before finishing one at hand.

10. Bxc6+ Rxc6 11. Nd5 Ne7 12. O-O Rc8 13. c4 Nxd5 14. exd5 Bd7 15. cxb5 axb5 16. Qb3 Qa5 17. f4 Be7 18. fxe5 O-O 19. e6 fxe6 20. Bg5

White went ahead to blunder the bishop by moving to g5, which took me a while to figure out why. Well, it boils down to the a2-g8 diagonal. White is capitalizing on the discovered attack; he would get out of the long diagonal, but he failed to see that after Rxf1+ 21. Rxf1 Bxg5, he has simply dropped a full piece with zero compensation since the cxe6 would not lead to anything, and the discovered attack would be of less relevance as well.

I choose to see this blunder as a product of carrying out another attack while you have not finished the one at hand. White had started by opening up the rook file and trying to launch something there, while also placing his queen on the other side of the board.

Here is the game link
Game Link

[Event "2026 Africa Individual Chess Championships"]
[Site "Cresta Jwaneng, Botswana"]
[Date "2026.06.19"]
[Round "1.2"]
[White "Ndahangwapo, Heskiel"]
[Black "Bellahcene, Bilel"]
[Result "0-1"]
[WhiteElo "2095"]
[BlackElo "2493"]
[WhiteTitle "FM"]
[BlackTitle "GM"]
[WhiteFideId "15202020"]
[BlackFideId "696358"]
[ECO "B32"]
[Opening "Sicilian Defense: Kalashnikov Variation"]

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 e5 5. Nb5 d6
6. N1c3 a6 7. Na3 Be6 8. Bc4 b5 9. Bd5 Rc8 10. Bxc6+ Rxc6
11. Nd5 Ne7 12. O-O Rc8 13. c4 Nxd5 14. exd5 Bd7
15. cxb5 axb5 16. Qb3 Qa5 17. f4 Be7 18. fxe5 O-O
19. e6 fxe6 20. Bg5 Rxf1+ 21. Rxf1 Bxg5 22. dxe6 Bc6
23. e7+ d5 24. Kh1 Bxe7 25. Qh3 Qd8 26. Qe6+ Kh8
27. h3 Qd7 0-1

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_{I am @samostically, a chess player and writer. I love to share the experience I have gained from different battles over the 64 squares and the knowledgeable insights from books I have read. But most importantly, I am a Midnight Owl and I founded the community Midnight Letters.}

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Thanks For Reading!