All the Pieces...Or the King? Part 2

Hi again,

When we left off from the first part, we saw that Miguel Najdorf was in a sticky situation in his game as black against Glucksberg:

Black has brought his bishop, knight, and queen over to the area around the white king. But there doesn't seem to be any way to checkmate it. Now all those pieces are stuck, and after White plays Rh1 on the next move, the bishop will be pinned. Meanwhile, the rest of Black's pieces are not playing. Has the grandmaster gone terribly wrong? Has he been lured into a clever trap by the promise of being a pawn up?

Actually, no. It looks like Najdorf had everything planned in advance. He realized that the one piece that was getting in his way was the same piece which had started the whole attack - the bishop on h2! That piece had to be given away...

So, Black is now down a piece. He has invaded White's fortress with the queen, and chased the king up a bit. But if the white king gets away, white will win. How can Najdorf continue the attack?

Right now, you might notice the the white king is in a stalemate position. "Stalemate?" you say. "But White has lots of pieces he can move!" That's right, it's not stalemate, but you can say that the king is in a "stalemate position". The king itself has no moves. That's a dangerous situation, since only one check could be mate!

But to make that one check, Black is going to need to get the rest of his pieces in to the game! You can't usually win a game with only a couple of pieces. You need to use all of them. So Najdorf makes a great move which opens up the center so his pieces can come into the game finally.

White is now up two pieces, and his king seems about to walk away. Has Najdorf just gone crazy ??

Nope! He had forseen the final bit of magic.

I hope you enjoyed this crazy little game by Miguel Najdorf!