Windmill Tactic

Anybody here familiar with a rather rare tactic called the windmill? And beyond that, anybody ever got the chance to employ it in a game? I think along with a good old fashioned Royal Fork, or Family Fork, it is the one tactic that I would love to be able to employ. But either the opportunity hasn't arisen, or I've just not been astute enough to catch it. I'd sure as *** hate to be the victim of this, though.

Windmill is certainly rare, the best iv seen is one of Laskers games, where he sacs his queen for a knight then pulls off this amazing windmill and picks up a decisive amount of material

I did manage to do a windmill one time, however my opponent immediately resigned after I sacked a knight to do it, so I didn't get the chance to see just how much stuff I could snatch from it.

Originally posted by kingisdead
Anybody here familiar with a rather rare tactic called the windmill? And beyond that, anybody ever got the chance to employ it in a game? I think along with a good old fashioned Royal Fork, or Family Fork, it is the one tactic that I would love to be able to employ. But either the opportunity hasn't arisen, or I've just not been astute enough to catch it. I'd sure as *** hate to be the victim of this, though.

Originally posted by Ragnorak
any chance of an explanation of what it is?

D

Originally posted by mateulose
It's a gruesome tactic that, usually, allows you to kill all the peices on the 7th rank, plus an additional peice.

It is a tactic consisting of a discovered check, followed by a normal check, followed by a discovered check on and on ad infinitum, until the attacker gets what he wants out of the painful situation. Beautiful, simply beautiful!

Set up your board as follows for an example: (Reading left to right, top of board to bottom) r000000k/bnpb000R0/0000N000/0000B000/00000000/00000000/000000K0/00000000/

White starts with 1.Rxd7+ Kg8 2. Rg7+ Kh8 3.Rxc7+ Kg8 4.Rg7+ Kh8 5.Rxb7+ Kg8 (back and forth), 6.Rg7+ Kh8 7.Rxa7+ Kg8 8.Rxa8+

Now set up the board as follows: /r0000nk0/pp0b00po/0000p00p/000pBnQ0/00pPooR0/00000N00/PqP00PPK/00000000/

O.K. got it? Allright, ready, set find the windmill! (have fun!)

Its a check followed by a discovered check, followed by check and so on.


http://gothicchess.org/vortex.html

Heres Lasker falling into one 😀

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Does it have to be the 7th rank? AFAIK, the Windmill tactic is one where you keep checking the enemy king and pick up pieces along the way.

I have been able to do this a couple of times now with the same pattern: opponent's King in corner (eg h8), my Bishop aiming at corner with pawn cover (eg g7), my Rook on 7th rank and covering the Bishop's attack on pawn cover (eg g7), and flight squares blocked (eg f8, f7, h7). The rook can then clean out the entire 7th rank.

Sounds like you got it down pat!