Cooked Rooks and Queens Sacs

An idea for the week's theme from Kotov and Tarrasch.

Neustadtl - Valenta Prague 1891.


Black to play. (the soltion is part of the blog theme)

Plus a game from the RHP Ch. Rd 2.

Blog 4

Not Qxg2+, but Qg2+ (with no capture) wins with a lovely smothered mate:

Mark Lyell - Vojtech Plat , Groningen 2011

Quite a game.

Right from the off Black was intent on complicating it.

Groningen.
There must be something in the water there. Groningen tournaments produce
some fantastic games. They should hold a full World Championship match there.

Milan Vidmar.
If you look at the line up for the first Groningen tournament in 1946.

Botvinnik, Euwe, Smyslov, Najdorf, Szabó, Boleslavsky, Flohr, Lundin,
Stoltz, Denker, Kotov, Tartakower....

If one of the above players published his best games you will usually find
their win v Vidmar from Groningen 1946 in it.

Milan Vidmar was getting on a bit then so you would hardly expect him to hold
his own against this younger generation. But even so the players had to
play at their intructive best to beat him.
The exception I know off being Najdorf who drew with Vidmar.

Of course it was at Groningen in 1946 that Najdorf beat Botvinnik thus in effect,
due to Soviet intervention, barring him from taking Fine' s place in the 1948
tournament to find the World Champion after Alkehine death in 1946.

Botvinnik, though he is reported to have disliked Najdorf, ('hated' is the word Najdorf uses.)
had nothing to do with the selection of the players who took part in the 1948
tournament. The full behind the scenes manipulation may never become fully known.

Originally posted by greenpawn34
Mark Lyell - Vojtech Plat , Groningen 2011

Quite a game.

Right from the off Black was intent on complicating it.

Groningen.
There must be something in the water there. Groningen tournaments produce
some fantastic games. They should hold a full World Championship match there.

Milan Vidmar.
If you look at the line up for the first Groningen ...[text shortened]... n the 1948
tournament. The full behind the scenes manipulation may never become fully known.

My guess is that Botvinnik resented the fact that Najdorf was far more successful with the ladies than he was.

I know this position



It's problem #201 from Reinfeld's "Complete Book of Chess Stratagems"
I mucked up the solution because I didn't account for Qxg2+
The theme stuck with me though and over a year later I still recognize the position

And now thanks to the blog I know what game it's from
Figures Reinfeld would use a position from one of Tarrasch's games. He was a fan.
I've also seen Reinfeld use some of the positions from Tarrasch's book "The Game of Chess"

The game is also included in Reinfeld's "Tarrasch's Best Games of Chess"
It's game #142