The Crazy Rook, Part 2

Hi Kids!

In the first part of "The Crazy Rook" we saw how the first world champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, built up a promising  position by keeping Curt Von Bardeleben's king in the center of the board. With one powerful move he opened up the path for his knight to hop in. Let's see the position where we left off:

White threatens Nf5 - if it were his move, he could go there and win a piece, since the knight on e7 is pinned. So Black played 18...Kf7, getting out of the pin, but then the knight hopped into the e6 square, where it attacks c7 and g7.

When a very good player is playing a game, you can tell. Just a couple of moves ago, the knight was on f3 and had nowhere really to go. Then Steinitz sacrificed a pawn, the knight came up to e6, and suddenly is coordinating with all of his other pieces. Let's see what happened next. Von Bardeleben was not going to lose without a fight.

All of Black's last moves have been forced, but it looks like he is still alive. Now he is threatening White's queen, as well as the knight.

There are some problems with Black's position though. His knight is pinned, and also his queen has to guard both the knight and the rook on c8. The black king has to guard the queen. So some of his pieces are overworked, and this allowed Steinitz to pull off a brilliant win.

At this point, Von Bardeleben saw that he was losing, and suddenly stood up and walked out of the room without saying anything. You should not do this! That's bad sportsmanship. But at least he later sent a note saying that he resigned.

Meanwhile, Steinitz showed the spectators how the game would have ended, and why Von Bardeleben got up and walked away:

The game would end with this beautiful checkmate position. You should know, the queen and the knight are the best partners. When they are working together to attack the opponent's king, it is a powerful force!

One thing that is amazing about this game is that it almost seems like all of Black's moves were forced. Steinitz kept making threats for almost the entire game. This is called the "initiative".

So long for now!