A novelty!

Shockingly, I encountered an Internet opponent tonight who doesn't read Chicago Chess Blog! As such, he had failed to read my post from last night demonstrating that 3...f6 and 4...g5 is not an effective response to the King's Gambit. But I wasn't content with 7.Qf7+ and mate in two more moves (7...Kd6 8.Qd5+ Ke7 9.Qe5#) as in last night's partie, and uncorked the novelty (at least for me) 7.Qxg5+! I learned this trick from Wall-Greenwalt, Dayton 1983. If Black responds with 7...Kd6, he gets mated the same way - just without his g-pawn - by 8.Qd5+ Ke7 9.Qe5#. Or he can play 7...Ke8, and get mated by 8.Qh5+ Ke7 9.Qe5#, as Greenwalt did. But NN played a novelty himself with 7...Nf6, allowing me to mate a move faster with 8.Qe5#!

How cool is this?

Above is the front cover of Archie Comics #112, dated August 1960 (the month I was born). It shows Archie studying a chess position! I just bought what appears to be the only copy available for sale on the Internet for the princely sum of $8.35, including shipping. Thank you, Bill and Jerry Wall, the publishers of White Knight Review! I learned of the comic from an article in the May/June issue of White Knight Review, a chess magazine that is available for free on the Internet here. It's a good read - check it out!

UPDATE: Here's an interesting article by Kerry Lawless (with a surname like that, let's hope he's never a criminal defendant), "Chess In Comic Books." There's no shortage of chess-themed comic book covers, it seems.