“The King is a fighting piece. Use it!” is a remark ascribed to Wilhelm Steinitz who is regarded as the first World Champion in Chess. Nevertheless, your common experience may make you think of your King only as a liability, which needs to be protected at any cost and the cost sometimes becomes so high that you give up your efforts! Only when you have been able to survive till an endgame with only pawns around that you possibly appreciate the thoughts behind the remark of Mr. Steinitz!
But a search through chess archives will show you many games where a player did use his King as a fighting piece who traveled all the way into the opponent’s territory to capture pieces and pawns and to provide support to his own attacking forces for delivering checkmate!
I have picked up six such examples and divided those into two groups. In this article, we present three games with a little ironic twist because it was the opponent who was mostly attacking but the fighting King took opportunity of these checks to move where it wanted to go without loss of tempo! The opponent ultimately realizes that he has brought the doom upon himself by his failure to see the intention of the King taking a walk!
In the second article Chess Tactics: The King’s role in attack – part 2, we show another three games where the King boldly stepped out on his own by taking advantage of opponent’s constricted position and took the battle to the enemy King to create a winning position.
First game – position after 31 moves:
32
Bc4+
Kg7
33.
Re7+
Kg6
34.
Bb3
Rg2+
35.
Kh1
h3
36.
Rd1
Rc8
37.
Rd6+
Kf5
38.
Rxa7
Rc1+
39.
Bd1
Ne2
40.
Ra5+
Kf4
41.
Rf6+
Ke3
42.
Re5+
Kf2
43.
Rxe2+
Kf1
White looked at 44. … Rg1# or 44. Rxg2 hxg2# and resigned.
Position at the end of Black King’s journey:
Second game – position after 19. … Qa3+:
20
Kd1
Nb2+
21.
Ke2
Qa6+
22.
Ke3
Nc4+
23.
Kxe4
gxf6
24.
Qxf6
Qb6
25.
Kf4
Qc7+
26.
Kg5
Bd5
26… Rfe8 27.Kh6 Kf8 28.Qh8+ Ke7 29.Rxe6+ […] Continue Reading…