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1928 / London

Alekhine’s knight windmill

Alexander Alekhine — A. Fletcher

The queen takes a knight and is offered to a pawn. Then bishop and knight alternate checks, a rook falls and the knight delivers mate.

Sacrifices · Piece coordination · Calculation

THE DETAIL

Gambit Café, London, 8 June 1928. Alekhine brings the knight closer with Nh4. Fletcher answers Ba6, attacking the queen and lining it up with the rook. Qxe4 removes the central knight and offers the queen to the f5-pawn. After fxe4, Bxe4+ opens the diagonal toward h7. Ng6+ forces the king to h7; Nxf8+ captures a rook with double check. The knight returns to g6, switches to e5 to uncover another bishop check and finishes with Nf7 mate, protected by the e6-pawn. The board preserves the 52-half-move score transcribed from British Chess Magazine; the video completes the idea with the mating continuation published in La Stratégie, June 1928, p.134, labelled separately. At Bxe4+, Rf5 was also legal, but Bxf5+ leads to mate too. The contemporary source records the opponent as A. Fletcher.

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Alexander Alekhine — A. Fletcher

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Alexander Alekhine — A. Fletcher

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Game and history sources

Video, explanations and animations by RookHabit. Pieces by Colin M. L. Burnett, distributed with python-chess (GPLv3+).