Max Ewue on left, Réti on right

Top Ten Games Of Richard Réti- #9- Réti Needs No Rooks!

Fire

Updated: Dec 7, 2022, 2:07 PM | 15

It is always satisfying to win a game with a mate you have studied before, whether that is a back-rank rook mate or a delusional bishop sacrifice that stems into thousands of lines. It doesn't matter what. Those are always nice.

Now imagine sacrificing both your rooks. In the middle game. Sounds oddly peculiar, because you don't need rooks in the middlegame. In this game, Réti used rooks to lure the queen away from any action, right into the corner of the board, making it so that the white queen was completely useless. The diversion worked and he had a wonderful bishop sacrifice to finish off the game.

The game starts out with some mainline Italian action (1.e4 1...e5 2.Nf3 2...Nc6 3.B.c4).But after those moves, you are often found to choose from two moves that are still considered the main line. 3...Nf6 and 3...Bc5. Both of which are good. The knight's move exerts pressure on the king's pawn, while the bishop's move is quiet, and it doesn't involve much theory. Keep in mind that the romantic age just ended, so there were still a lot of fun lines lurking around. So the knight move was played.

The next move in the mainline is d3, but then after castle castle, neither side will have anything, except to trade off their pieces, so they will convert into a boring (drawn) endgame. For a more exciting, more open game, Ewue plays d4, lighting the whole center on fire. Réti then took the newly advanced pawn with exd4

The next move played is 0-0. The idea underlining this move is twofold: first to conceal the king under the protection of pawns, and in the second place to creating a lot of viable open files for the rook to roam free on. Retis advised young players to stay away from the queen's gambit, to help their chess better in the long run. It seems strange so far that he would play an opening like this if he didn't like the queen's gambit, but his next move is a gambit. Nxe5. For Euwe, this means that he can pin Réti's knight to his king (Re1). But not a completely winning pin, because Réti replied with d5. The knight is under a bad consequence for taking a risky pawn, and the white bishop is powerful, and this move weakens the bishop and saves the knight.

Ewue takes. Optically it is hard to believe that is good at first, but if you take a moment to analyze you can see the reason behind this. That pawn is dictating the center. It is more useful

then the bishop, so Ewue captures. Réti captures back with Qxd5 and gets replied with Nc3. Of course, Réti can't just take the knight, without losing a queen, so Réti shuffles on out of there with Qa5. A minor pin, carrying almost no threats with it. This converges into a position where white has the chance for two open files, right into the dead center. How will Réti come back from the devastating lack of center space?

As a beginner, you learn pretty quick that f5 was a move that involves precise play, and was dubbed risky because of the open lines to the king (castled and uncastled). But after all the captures that took place on d5, f4 is the only move that saves the knight. But that doesn't mean that Réti is in the clear from all attacks. There is still Bf5.

This move may be more complicated than it looks. The queen is threatening to go on d8, the rooks are threatening to connect, and there are, of course, many mate threats. All of it can be overwhelming, but given that Réti had the material advantage, they both had leverage. With this in mind, Réti shows off his creativity with Qc5, To create his own threats.

The obvious move for Ewue was Qd8. Something about it just looks natural, like the queen is supposed to go there. Although after Réti moved to Kf7, putting the queen is sort of in a dead spot. No checks, no threats, and no capture, all while being immobilized in a weak spot of the board. So Euwe focuses on something else. Nxe4, and then fxe4, making the rook able to lead some attacks.

As suspected, The aggressive Rad1 is played, with ideas of going to d7. These types of attacks you can always see coming, but they are hard to defend against. In this particular case, there is only one move that breaks the open file, and sacrifices the first rook in this game. Bd6! (should be brilliant). Of course, the most valuable idea in this move was to lure the queen away from the explosive center action, away from any attacks Réti might lead.

Now that the queen has moved, the bishop is no longer defended. Réti captures it with Qxh5.

At this point you will notice that

Réti has a future move of Bg3, which wins a queen or wins the game
Réti has the bishop pair
After loosing the rook, Réti is still up material
The two open files that are occupied by two white rooks are blocked off
The queen is blocked off (black has no active pieces)

At this point, there is almost no chance that white will pull a comeback out of this. All black has left in the attack that once looked so devastating, is his pawns. His kingside pawns, are his only hope of saving the match. So white goes f4.

The queen has quite clearly got to stay into the attack, so it only shuffles to the side one square, with Qh4. But then, white regains control of the open file, and captures a pawn at the same time with (Rxe4). But maybe not the best idea, because it allowed Réti to sacrifice his bishop and his second rook at the same time with Bh3!!. But as a desperate attempt to gain material, white takes the decoy rook and blunders mate in six with it. (Qxa8??)

Can you find the mate that Max Euwe missed?

Well good job if you did that.

This game was pretty impressive, with Réti stacking up with two brilliants, a 97+ accuracy, and no mistakes whatsoever. All best moves, books, greats and brilliants.

Top Ten Games Of Réti

Top Ten Games Of Richard Réti- #9- Réti Needs No Rooks!

Wan Shi Tong's Library