The Ultimate King March!
I recently did a blog ... "Just the Basics." In that blog, I compared chess to war ... in reality, that is all chess is, it is a board game that is based on warfare, and it maybe several thousand years old.
A friend, @Christopher_Parsons, came up with a completely different analogy ... he likened chess to American Football. (NFL) "Match-ups is where its at," he said; and it is difficult to disagree with him.
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In the following game, Short skillfully manuevers his pieces, and gains an advantage. When most of Black's pieces are stuck on the last rank or on the Queen-side, and all of the MATCH-UPS favor White ... then (and only then!) does Short begin his assault on the King-side. Short has assessed that Timman is (now) powerless to prevent all of his outflanking manuevers - and ... to prove his point - he throws his King into the mix as well! (Something that is almost NEVER done at the master level!)
One of the most amazing chess games of all time, has to be the following one:
- Click HERE to replay this game on the "ChessGames" website.
- Click HERE to see my web page on this marvelous game.
- Click HERE to visit my "Game of The Month" website.
(Learn the openings and study GM games at the same time!) - Click HERE to see maybe the most complicated game ever played!
It is a "Four Pawns Attack" in the Alekhine's Defense (opening) and it is deeply annotated! - Stockfish 10 found 30.Nh4!!! Can anyone tell me how this move wins? (I already know.)
(See the comments, below.)
Epilogue ... plus two new discoveries!
When I analyzed this game for my web page, I actually discovered two new things about this game.
One GM - in a magazine (before the Internet) - flatly stated that after 30.h4! that:
"Black could only avoid a rapid mate by surrendering his Queen." (He was wrong.)
My discoveries are important for the following reasons:
- As far as I know, neither one of these lines were ever even looked at before.
- I was the first to discover that 30.Nh4!! was superior to 30.h4! (Both moves win.)
- I was the first to discover that Black's move, 31...Rc8!?; was actually an error. (All the analysts - of that time - seemed to think that it no longer mattered what Black played.)
- I was definitely the first to point out that Black could have avoided mate ... and escaped into an endgame with 31...Bc8.
- Just a year or two after this game was played, a famous IM, (working for & writing a column for USCF); told me it did not matter what Black played after 30.h4!, as Black could not escape mate. (He was wrong.)
- About two years after this game was played, I talked about my discoveries - in an article for "The World Chess Academy," unfortunately, that web site is now closed.
- Since it is (now) obvious that 30.h4! allows Black to escape to an endgame ... this conclusively proves that 30.Nh4!!, is superior to 30.h4! (After 30.Nh4!!, Black can only avoid a certain mate by playing suicide chess and giving away several pieces. Since humans don't play chess this way, this means that after 30.Nh4!!, Black will either get mated or resign.)
- Mainly because of what the titled players said, I really did not believe - 100% - in my discoveries - until now. (When this game was first played ... engines were basically toys, and of no use to a strong chess-player. Nowadays, no GM in the world can defeat a good chess engine.) Because of the unbelievable advancements in technology, I now have complete confidence in all of my findings ... and the analysis of the chess engines.
- I already touched on some of this (in my video), but I thought it would be useful to wrap things up by analyzing both of the crucial lines. (The endgame line - after 30.h4! & then 31...Rc8; - and also the superior continuation of 30.Nh4!!)
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I used many engines in this analysis: Fritz 15, Deep Fritz, Komodo 11, Houdini 6 and even the new versions of SF. (Stockfish 10.)
Please leave a comment ... below.
