
Three Knights Checkmate
Last Wednesday, Suffolk played in the monthly East Anglian Team Battle and ended up in 3rd place, one our best finishes for a while. Well done to all members who took part!
Halfway through the tournament, an extremely rare event occurred over-the-board in the game between Globalise (Norfolk Juniors, playing with the White pieces) and Suffolk’s RowanKent (playing with the Black pieces).
Both players began the game displaying some good opening knowledge on the Samisch Variation of the King’s Indian Defence.
During the middlegame, Black gradually improved their position bit by bit and made some advances on the queenside.
On the other side of the board, White made a dubious piece sacrifice in order to continue a dangerous kingside attack with good practical chances.
With accurate play, Black managed to keep White’s heavy artillery, which was lined-up along the h- and g-files, at bay, maintaining their material advantage.
Despite the resulting position being winning for Black, there was still some work to do in order to figure out how to best fend off some potential threats to their King tucked away in the corner of the board.
One of Black’s pawns had managed to march its way to the seventh rank and was eager to promote. If it were to promote to a Queen, it could have meant further complications, so in order to keep things simple, Black under-promoted their pawn to a knight in order to give check and maintain their tempo. Under-promoting to a knight is not unheard of, but doing so with your other two knights still on the board is extremely rare, aesthetic, and rather miraculous.
Click through the game below to see what happens move-by-move, or just skip forward to the end bit, if you just want to see the finale!
The East Anglian Team Battle scheduled on every fourth Wednesday each month and is a great opportunity to play and meet juniors from neighbouring counties.

