You are absorbing the news from GAZA when suddenly the strike on the MH17 takes your eyes away from it. While you are trying to deal with the new information, GAZA is attacked again. This is the art of decoy used widely in the game of chess, and whoever masters this art wins almost every time.
However, I cannot actually say that the two are interrelated as I don't really have the evidence to link between them. This post is only to demonstrate what decoy means in chess, and I will use examples from my own games, not from the masters.
Perhaps the most memorable decoy I employed was against Lim Yeang Khee in 1998 during the Grand Asean Chess Challenge:
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| Yours Truly - Lim Yeang Khee, GACC III, 1998 |
The Black King was sitting comfortably in his castle when suddenly 27.Rxh7+ came crashing. It lured the King into the corner where he was eventually taken on a terror ride towards his doom. Once the King has left his guard of f7, I took the liberty to gatecrash the castle starting with 28.Qf7+. The rest was history.
In recent games also, especially online games because I don't enter many tournament games nowadays, I have successfully deployed the decoy with deadly effects. Take for example a game against dedanikola in 2014:
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| dedanikola - Yours Truly, chess.com, 2014 |
I was playing black in this sharp position. I could actually take the e5-pawn but chose to take the King for a walk instead with 18... Nxf2!? where the open King position was subject to checks from my Bishops and Rooks. Coupled with his weak defending, I managed to checkmate him 12 moves later.
