SECTORES DE APLICACIÓN

Good for you if you had the patience to read through all of the last example (including the variations at the end)! I know it’s hard work, but it will really pay off. Now, I’m going to show you a couple of useful tactics to keep in mind for attacking the king.

I may have given the impression so far that a successful attack always involves having more material near the king, but that’s not so. Having more material near the king is useful, but that’s all. It doesn’t guarantee a successful attack, and it’s not always necessary for an attack to succeed. Sometimes an attack doesn’t succeed because you have more pieces near the king than your opponent has defending it; it’s just that the pieces you do have near the king work really well. There are many ways this can happen, and I can hardly show you all of them in a few pages. But I want to show you two of the most common ways it can happen.

Chess Talk

The back rank refers to the rank at the bottom of your position (1st rank for White, eighth rank for Black). The back rank is weak when a rook check or queen check along that rank would be checkmate.

Nowhere to Run!

When the king is castled, often it has three pawns right in front of it blocking all the squares it could move to. That’s often a good thing: The pawns provide very good shelter for the king. However, having the pawns all in a row can also be a problem.

Since the king is already on the edge of the board, it only has one rank it can move along. If a rook or queen should come along and give check, and there is no way to capture it or block the check, the king will be checkmated! That is called the “weak back rank,” and it is an incredibly common theme. You’ve already seen this theme in this book; for example, the very first checkmate I showed you (Chapter 3, Diagram 21), was a checkmate on the weak back rank. But the idea is so important, I’ll show you another example.

Chess Talk

Making luft (luft is German for air) is when you push one pawn in front of the castled king to give the king a square to move to in case it is checked on the back rank.

In Diagram 22, White has moved his h-pawn from h2 to h3, thereby giving the king a square to move to. But this square is attacked by the black bishop on c7, so White’s king still suffers from a weak back rank, which Black exploits with 1 . . .Ra1+. White can block the check with his rook or his knight, but these pieces will be captured, and the check will soon be checkmate.

Chess Talk

A smothered mate is when the knight checks the king, and because the king is completely surrounded by its own pieces, it’s checkmate.

Death by Suffocation

You would think that the king would be safe if it surrounded itself with lots of pieces, right? Well, that certainly blocks any check from most pieces, but not the knight! You can’t block a knight’s check. And if you’ve taken away all the squares the king can move to, that one check might be mate. When that happens, it’s called the smothered mate.

Diagram 22: Black to move.

A quick look at Diagram 23 gives the impression that Black is in no danger of

smothered mate here. But in fact, White can force checkmate in just a few moves, by

combining no fewer than four tactical ideas: deflection, the weak back rank, double check, and smothered mate. If you think that White might have a way to force

checkmate, and you’re looking for the way to do it, it’s good to look at a check. So that suggests that the right first move is 1.Nf7+, as shown in Diagram 24. Now Black can’t capture the knight, because that would leave the queen on c8 unprotected, and White would play 2.Qxc8+, with mate to follow on the back rank. (Here is where deflection and the weak back rank play their role.)

Diagram 23: White to move.

Diagram 24: White plays 1.Nf7+.

Since Black can’t capture the knight, he must play 1 . . .Kg8 (see Diagram 25). Now what? Again we should look for a check, but no ordinary discovered check will work, because the queen on c4 is attacked by the queen on c8. So we have to use double check and play 2.Nh6+ in Diagram 26, after which Black has only one possible response: 2 . . .Kh8 (Diagram 27).

You might think that White should force perpetual check now, by playing 3.Nf7+ Kg8 4.Nh6+ Kh8 5.Nf7+, and so on. After all, White is behind in material, and how could Black be vulnerable to attack? But think about this: When White plays Nf7+, Black only has one square to move the king—g8. Is there some way White can force Black to occupy this square with the rook? If so, then when White plays Nf7+, Black’s king will be smothered by its own pieces, and it will be checkmate.

Diagram 25: Black plays 1 . . .Kg8.

Diagram 26: White plays 2.Nh6+.

Diagram 27: Black plays 2 . . .Kh8.

And yes, there is a way to do it: the queen sacrifice 3.Qg8+!! (see Diagram 28).

Black’s only move is to capture the queen with 3 . . .Rxg8, as shown in Diagram 29, and then in Diagram 30, 4.Nf7# is checkmate. Notice that not only did White force Black to occupy the g8 square with his rook, but also when he did so, it took the rook away from the defense of the f7 square.

Diagram 28: White plays 3.Qg8+!!.

Diagram 29: Black plays 3 . . .Rxg8.

Diagram 30: White plays 4.Nf7#.