Chess for Dummies: Mind-Blowing Moves
I recently saw an article on FiveThirtyEight that profiled Wesley So, the current US chess champion, and the next great hope for American chess to reclaim the world title for the first time since Bobby Fischer’s reign. If you don’t remember, Bobby Fischer is the American grandmaster who is considered by many to have been the greatest chess player of all time. He’s also the inspiration for Erlich Bachman’s line in his Uptick rant — “Suddenly it feels like time is slowing down. I could see every move I was going to make, 12 steps ahead. It was like I was Bobby Fischer, if he could really f***.”
Any way, this article got my attention and made me think of how interesting chess really is. So today, we’ll be going through a couple of the great games in chess history and what made them so noteworthy.
Side note: A quick orientation to how I’ll be referring to squares on the board is in the picture below
Lasker vs. Thomas, 1912
In this 1912 game nicknamed “Fatal Attaction” and “The Immortal King Walk,” Edward Lasker pulled off one of the great moves in chess history. After 10 moves, the game looked quite equal, with Lasker playing as White. Black is down a knight and a pawn, and white is down a bishop and a pawn. Pretty even.
Given that the game has been pretty predictable and conservative thus far, Lasker pulled a real shocker when, on his next move, he inexplicably slid his white queen up two spots to h7 to take the pawn and put black in check. To an uneducated bystander, this move looked weak on the surface as the white queen’s protection from the rook on d3 is blocked by the knight on e4. It’s an easy take for the black king to take the white queen (it’s also the only available move, as it’s the only way to escape check). So the king moves to h7 and takes the white queen.
This feels like a real win for Thomas, given that the game was nearly even before and now Thomas is up a queen. Lasker’s genius was yet to be revealed, however. The king’s move from g8 to h7 was the first move in its immortal walk down the board to its demise. Rather than attacking Thomas’ black king in the top right corner, Lasker had orchestrated a series of moves to draw him down the board into Lasker’s waiting trap. To force the issue, Lasker moves his knight from e5 to h6, takes a bishop, and puts Thomas back in check.
Now, Thomas only one option to come down the board to h6. If he retreated to g8, he’s still in check from the knight on f6. If he went to g6, he’s in check form the other knight. If he went to g8, Lasker would move the knight on e5 to g6, and it’s checkmate. So he has to come down the board.
Lasker keeps the pressure on, and walks the King slowly down the board, each time giving Thomas only one option for where to move and directing him straight to his corner of the board.
Now, Lasker has him exactly where he wants him. Thomas’ only option again is to slide from f3 to g2, where Lasker’s rook is waiting. Thomas slides the king diagonally down, Lasker moves his rook up, and Thomas is one inevitable move away from checkmate.
Thomas’ only option is to slide down from g2 to g1, after which Lasker will move his king out of the way and have a classic two rook checkmate.
This move was considered so brilliant because it not only had some surprise value (it looked like Lasker gave up a queen for no reason), but also that it had 7 precisely thought out moves immediately after it to lead straight to checkmate, a pretty dazzling display of forethought. And so Lasker was immortalized for his ploy to gently guide Thomas’ king down the board into a cozy little trap in his corner.
Levitsky vs. Marshall, 1912
The same year, Marshall one-upped Lasker and delivered what is considered a consensus top-3 move of all time in chess history, in a game now known as “The Gold Coin Game.” The relative skill of the players was a bit tiled in Marshall’s favor — he had been the US champion for the last three years, and would continue to hold that title for the next 24 years, making him the longest-tenured US champion in history.
After Levitsky’s (playing white) 23rd move, Marshall found himself in the following position.
Marshall (playing black) is up a knight, but actually is in a really treacherous position. His black queen is in immediate danger from the white rook on c5, and if he moves the queen out of the c column, the white rook on c5 will move to c7. Then, Levitsky could slide the queen from g5 to g7, and Marshall would be in checkmate. To spectators, it appeared as though this game was very much Levitsky’s to lose, as Marshall’s best case scenario would be losing his queen and playing catch-up. Marshall, seemingly out of desperation, inexplicably moved his queen out of the c column, and moved it over to g3.
Not only did he clear out the c column for Levitsky to attack his king, but the black queen wasn’t even safe here. In fact, three pieces could take the queen (pawns on f2 and h2, and queen on g5). Spectators were thoroughly befuddled, and Levitsky thought he had it locked up.
Levitsky studied the board, plotting his checkmate. But his confident smile started to morph into an expression of utter shock.
What happened? How did Levitsky go from assured confidence to despondency? Well let’s study the board a bit closer. To take the black queen on g3, Levitsky had three options.
First, he could have slid his pawn from h2 over. If he does that though, the h column is in control of the black rook on h3. And then Marshall would move the knight on d4 to e2, and Levitsky’s in checkmate.
Okay, so what about using the pawn on f2? Marshall would move his knight from d4 to e2 again, putting Levitsky in check. Levitsky would have to move the king from g1 to h1, and then Marshall would move his rook down from h3 to h2… checkmate again.
Okay, okay, two bad options — what about the queen on g5? This is a bit more complicated but we can go through it. So Levitsky slides the queen from g5 down, and takes the black queen.
Marshall moves his knight down from d4 to e2 again, and forks the white queen and king — both are compromised so white has to give up the queen.
Now, it looks like Levitsky could at least fight another day, and just take the black knight on g3 with the f2 or h2 pawns to get out of check. Wrong. If he took it with the h2 pawn, the rook on h3 has the king in check, so he can’t do that. If Levitsky moves the f2 pawn, the rook on f8 will come all the way down to take the white rook on f1, and its checkmate. So again, Levitsky would have to move the king to g1.
This gives us more carnage — the knight on g3 can take the rook on f1.
At this point, Levitsky can either take the black knight with the king or the black rook with the pawn, but the critical damage is done. The net result is that Marshall would have, at worst, a knight and a rook to Levitsky’s sole rook, and a general convention in chess at this level is that 2 vs. 1 scenarios like that at the end of games are essentially a Kobayashi Maru for the person with 1. So instead of playing out the string until an inevitable checkmate, a demoralized Levitsky simply tipped his king over and resigned.
As the spectators pieced what happened together, they were so overcome with appreciation that they started tossing coins onto the table as a collection for Marshall (similar to the origin of the hat-trick, if you remember). Marshall walked out the door, a few dollars richer with the honor of having played “the most elegant chess move of all time.”
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