Thursday, 29 April 2021

A very old windmill

 

White to play and win

While the "Windmill" is a rare but useful tactical idea, it may be a lot older than most players assume. The most famous example comes from the 1920's (Torre v Lasker), but there is at least one example that dates back to the 1590's. Given as a puzzle by Polero, White wins by a succession of checks and discovered checks. However the original position had the Black queen on e8, resulting in a far shorter (and non thematic) win. Tim Krabbe  in his book "Chess Curiosities" suggested the correction shown here.

I will leave the answer as an exercise for the reader, but hopefully it isn't too difficult.


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