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August 6, 2009

Chess: An accident meets a prepared mind

By Eric Morrow

Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by mistake. He left open a Petri dish before leaving for vacation. When he returned, he observed that the dish was contaminated with mold, which thwarted the growth of the dish’s bacteria. From this, he discovered penicillin.

In this week’s position black has mistakenly captured white’s knight at f3 with its bishop. This permits white to unleash a discovered attack, like an unforeseen antibody. With this hint in mind please try to find white’s best move.

White is minus a knight. It thus makes sense to capture black’s knight at f3, since it has ungraciously captured white’s knight. White would be better if it did. However, white can do much better.

White recovers the piece plus an additional piece by exploiting the pressure on e6. White does this by first capturing black’s pawn on e6 with its rook on e1. The rook simultaneously threatens the queen and a discovered check.

That is, on white’s next move the rook moves, which discovers a bishop-check. The rook in turn moves to where it can inflict the most injury, such as moving to a square where it wins black’s queen on the subsequent move. For example, if the black queen were to move to c7, white’s rook would capture black’s c6 pawn and win black’s queen after the black king moves out of the bishop-check.

After Rxe6, black’s best move is to relocate its queen to b8. This saves the queen. White’s rook then captures black’s e7 bishop, as its bishop delivers check. Black’s king moves to safety on h8. White then either captures black’s knight or bishop. Capturing the bishop is best.



White’s convergence of its bishop, queen and rook on black’s backward e6 pawn coupled with black’s error lead to this discovered attack. Thus, the lesson here is that, to paraphrase the scientist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, a discovery is an accident meeting a prepared mind.

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