The Final Fork, Part 1

In this (and the next) week's article, we will see a game by the legendary Alexander Alekhine. In this game, Alekhine begins an attack out of nowhere, in a position which at first looks bad for him - and fourteen moves later wins by making a basic fork of a rook and knight. In those fourteen moves of hand-to-hand battle, most of the pieces on the board are swept away, leaving just Alekhine's fork.

Alekhine (pronounced ah-LEKH-in) was the fourth world champion. He was originally from Russia and had a very eventful life, mostly because there were many wars during his lifetime. His style of chess play is considered to be very imaginative. A player named Bohatirchuk who played him alot when they were both captives in Germany during World War One said this: "In his hands the pieces were transformed into living creatures, making moves that were completely unexpected to his opponents." In the game we are going to see, his opponent definitely experienced some unexpected moves!

His opponent in this game was Richard Reti, one of the best players of the time. Reti was one of the pioneers of a new theory of openings, in which a player does not try to occupy the center with pawns, but rather tries to control it from a distance with pieces. He tried that out in this game.

So far nothing amazing has happened yet, and the position looks quite good for White. He has developed all of his pieces and his knights are in good position, pressuring Black's queenside. He is ready to play b4-b5, to open a file and start attacking Black's pawns.

But Alekhine didn't worry. He too has his advantages - a rook on the half-open e-file, queen and bishop lined up, and - most importantly - some pieces aimed at White's king. Just some small attacking chances were all a great attacker like Alekhine needed to make his opponent very nervous!

Both sides have advanced pawns on the side of the board they were attacking, in the hope of opening lines. At first it looks like White has been more successful. The queenside is being broken open, the knights are coming in. On the other hand, it is harder to see what Alekhine's ...h5-h4 attack did. He cannot get a rook to the h-file, and the g3 pawn is still defended by the f2 pawn.

It turned out that Alekhine knew what he was doing, and the position at the end of the last diagram is one of the most famous middlegame positions in all of chess, because this was where Alekhine played a really surprising move which began his attack! Check out part two next week to see what happened.