Nothing new under the sun

The same tactical themes are seen again and again. Compare the finishes of these two games. They reached identical positions except for the side on which White castled. In both, 15.Nxc6! is the killer, with the point that 15...bxc6 is met by 16.Qa6#, while 15...Qxe2 is met by the unusual checkmate 16.Nxa7#. The first game is No. 314 in Chernev's classic The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess.

Over sixty years later, I played this blitz game, without knowing of its predecessor:

The astute observer will notice that in my game, 14.Nxc6! was already possible. In fairness to Albert, who was my teammate on the Lane Tech High School chess team, this result was highly atypical of our games at the time. He was much stronger. Later we both became masters. Many years later, he co-founded the chessgames.com website.

Like déjà vu all over again

Earlier this month, I showed you a trap in the Fort Knox Variation of the French Defense where White traps Black's queen on f6 with 8.Bg5! Bxf3 9.Qd2! and if 9...Qxd4, 10.Bb5+. Here's a variant of the same trap with the players' c-pawns exchanged. This requires a small refinement by White, but Black's queen stays trapped. Note that if only future GM Sherzer had read Chernev's The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess, he wouldn't have fallen into this trap!

The Poisoned b-pawn

Tarrasch wrote in his famous treatise The Game of Chess, "It is very dangerous to make a raid with the queen early on in the game. In particular, the capture of the queen's knight's pawn with the queen often brings its own revenge." Irving Chernev facetiously observed in his 1000 Best Short Games of Chess, "Alvin Cass used to say, “My grandmother, when she was a little girl, told me never to capture the queen knight pawn with my queen.'" The miniature Botvinnik-Spielmann, Moscow 1935 is one famous debacle by a great player who disregarded Cass's granny's advice.

Modern theory is less dogmatic, as evidenced by the popularity of the so-called Poisoned Pawn Variation in the Najdorf Sicilian (1.e4 c5 2.Nf2 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Qb6, intending 8.Qd2 Qxb2, a favorite of Bobby Fischer, and later played by the likes of Kasparov, Anand, and even Karpov. According to Larry Evans in New Ideas in Chess, James Sherwin, in capturing Bisguier's b-pawn in Bisguier-Sherwin, New York 1955, observed, "Why should I labor under antediluvian prejudices?" He won in 58 moves.

All of that said, one should not chase after the b-pawn without careful consideration. My opponent in this game joined the millions of players who've done so and later regretted it.

A note on the opening: 3...Qd6 in the Center Counter or Scandinavian Defense is a popular line these days. My 6.Ne5 was nothing special, and is usually met by 6...Nc6. After that, 7.Bf4!? Nxd4 (inferior is 7...Qxd4?! 8.Nxc6, especially if followed up with 8...Qxf4?? 9.Qd8# Mataoussi-Al Khelaifi, Women's Olympiad 2008) 8.Ng6!? Qe6+ 9.Ne5 Qb6 10.Nc4 Qe6+ 11.Ne5 Qd6 12.Ng6 Qe6+ 13.Ne5 led to an amusing draw by repetition in Smith-Serpek, New Zealand Championship 2000.

"Teacher overslept!" answers, part 1

I'm glad the strike ended relatively quickly: otherwise, I'd have been posting delinquent answers well into 2013.  These examples were lifted from Irving Chernev and ChessBase 2012.

Experienced players often resign against masters when they've lost a minor piece.  Beginners should keep playing until they understand why the position is hopelessly lost.

11) White to play

12) Black to play

13) White to play

14) White to play

15) Black to play

16) White to play

17) Black to play

Sometimes good counting skills are more important than brilliance:

Another From's Gambit trap

Here's another From's Gambit miniature. I first saw this game many years ago in Irving Chernev's classic 1000 Best Short Games of Chess. I actually managed to win the same game, move for move, in an offhand game in 1974 or so. Note that after 3...Bxd6, Black threatens immediate mate with 4...Qh4+ 5.g3 Qxg3+! 6.hxg3 Bxg3#. White's 4.Nf3! is the only good response. After 4...g5!? (the more solid 4...Nf6!? is another line), White's only decent responses are 5.g3 g4 6.Nh4 and 5.d4 g4 6.Ne5! (6.Ng5?! is interesting but unsound). As Bier demonstrates, 5.e4? is a lemon, losing material (or White's king) by force.

A Chicago original

J.R. Houghteling was a strong Chicago player around the turn of the 20th century. Here is his most famous game. White's play is feeble, but Houghteling concludes the game with a beautiful checkmate. Irving Chernev, in his classic The Thousand Best Short Games of Chess, noted that Bigelow called the final position "a rainbow of Bishops and Knights." Francis Wellmuth in The Golden Treasury of Chess wrote that it was "[o]ne of the most extraordinary mates ever given in actual play."

The wonderful chess writer and novelist Tim Krabbé once questioned the game's veracity (scroll down to No. 355), but later acknowledged, "A communication by Frederick Rhine makes it clear that speculations of [Dodge-Houghteling] being a hoax, are unjustified." In the same post, he gave several later examples of similar mates.

A trap in the Vienna Game

The trap below has caught a number of players over the years. After 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bc4, 3...Nxe4 is the well-known "fork trick," envisioning 4.Nxe4 d5, when Black regains the piece with equality. More common is the sharp 4.Qh5! (attacking both f7 and e5) Nd6 (virtually forced) 5.Bb3 (5.Qxe5+ is equal). Then Black can choose between the solid 5...Be7 6.Nf3 Nc6 7.Nxe5 0-0, and the wild sacrificial line 5...Nc6!? 6.Nb5! g6 (6...Nxb5?? 7.Qxf7#) 7.Qf3! f5 8.Qd5! Qe7 (8...Qf6!? is also playable) 9.Nxc7+ Kd8 10.Nxa8 b6, which Eric Schiller christened the "Frankenstein-Dracula Variation."

White's 4.Bxf7+?!, as in the game below, isn't very good unless Black falls into the trap in this game. After 4...Kxf7 5.Nxe4, Black should play 5...d5!, meeting 6.Qf3+ with 6...Kg8! 7.Ng5 Qd7!, when Black has the bishop pair, his king is safe, he owns the center and will soon drive back White's pieces. After the plausible 5...Nc6?! 6.Qf3+! Kg8?? (6...Ke8!) 7.Ng5! Black is suddenly lost. White has the terrible dual threats of 8.Qf7# and 8.Qd5#, and 7...Qxg5 8.Qd5# doesn't help.

The British chess writer G.H. Diggle wrote an amusing account of having lost a club match game this way (Davids-Diggle, London 1949) in all of two minutes, while his teammates' games were just getting started. His later investigation revealed the same game had been played in 1899 between Imbusch and Goering (see Irving Chernev's 1000 Best Short Games of Chess, p. 6) and that the British Chess Magazine in 1901 had described 6...Kg8?? as "a common blunder in this and similar positions."