Euwe Blunder
The next time you feel bummed out because you made some patzer oversight, remember the following blunder that Euwe played against Lasker in the Nottingham 1936 tournament:
8/pp4pp/2p1kp2/b7/2nP4/3K3P/PP3PP1/2B1N3 w - - 0 24
Euwe (Black) had just played 23...Bc7-a5, attacking the knight on e1. If White captures on c4, Black captures on e1. If white moves the e1-knight, Black moves their threatened c4-knight.
But what if White could move the knight with threat?
24.b4! Bxb4 25.Nc2! and Black is going to lose a piece. Euwe chose 25...Bd2 26.Bxd2 Nb2+ 27.Ke2 and resigned six moves later.
4 comments:
Fatal attraction. A surprising oversight at that level, but very pretty.
I bet many of us didn't even think about playing b4. We only would consider the moves N to somewhere and king takes knight. I guess that is why Rowson in his book Chess for Zebras says that we have to unlearn what we have learned and play the game. That way we might see b4 and dismiss our faulty narrative like 'our knight is attacked, either i move it away or take his knight'.
"Euwe" wasn't even his real name. That was just what people called him because that was the reaction they had to his blunders: "Euwe, I can't believe he played 23...Ba5??"
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