Monday, April 30

Mate on the move? Cop this!

Bill Cornwall's chess column in the South Florida Sun Sentinel yesterday is about the upcoming World Championship elimination matches at Elista. He writes:

Kamsky's Way:
Four weeks from now, 16 fearsome grandmaster challengers will face off in Elista, Russia, in a series of elimination matches leading toward the World Championship. American Gata Kamsky is one of them. Now 32, Siberian-born Kamsky is a former U.S. champion who first held the title as a teenager two years after moving to the United States. Four years later, he became the official, though unsuccessful, challenger of the great champion Anatoly Karpov. Then, he retired from chess for almost 10 years. In the last few years, he has returned with amazing success, becoming the highest-rated U.S. player and a candidate for the world title.

(You can read the column here: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/lifestyle/sfl-29achessapr29,0,4030245.story?coll=sfla-features-headlines).

The column ends with a game from Kamsky's clash with Kramnik in their World Championship Candidates Match played at New York in 1994. It was a game full of action and tactics and on move 31. Kramnik's queen was on h6 threatening mate on the move, supported by his pawn at f6. Neither the pawn, the queen, or the mating square could be threatened. It was all over.

Or was it?

Kamsky unleashed one of the most amazing cominations I've ever seen on a chess board and 11 moves later Kramnik resigned.

Regrettably the on-line story doesn't show the starting position but, with the magical intervention of Chess Genie you can play through the whole game here. Although Kramnik had his mate-in-one at move 31 the shenanigans started a few moves before that as Kamsky fought to stay in the game.

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