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Chess with Mother Goose
TEST YOUR TACTICS
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Chess has had its share of prodigies who astounded (and confounded) their seniors. Capablanca whupping his father at age four and Sammy Reshevsky going on tour as a young boy are two who went on to claim their place among the all time greats of the game.
And who could forget the young Fischer, dragging himself up by his bootstraps on ability and sheer determination.
| The House that Jack Built
This is the farmer sowing the corn,
That kept the cock that crowed in the morn,
That waked the priest all shaven and shorn,
That married the man all tattered and torn,
That kissed the maiden all forlorn,
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn,
That tossed the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
– Mother Goose |
More recently there has been a surge of young players strutting their stuff with the world's best—Polgar, Leko, Ponomariov, Carlsen and Karjakin are among them.
Some authorities equate this surge of young talent to the development of chess on the Internet which permits unprecedented learning opportunities and gives young players the opportunity to match themselves against strong opponents from an early age.
This is simply not so! We need go no further than the nursery rhymes of Mother Goose to realise that chess lessons were always available from the cradle, had we only the perception to realise it.
Let's look at just one of those rhymes—The House that Jack Built—as a chess lesson. What happens when your position is built on a structure where each piece depends on another for support?
Chess Genie will allow you to move the pieces around the displayed board. Don't forget to click the "Reset" button to return to the diagrammed position.
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Mother Goose has been around for a long time now but she was sadly absent from the St. Petersburg tournament in 1909. Oldrich Duras caught Eugene Znosko-Borovsky in this position and forced white's rook at e1 to combat two threats at the same time.
Here is the rook that knows no fear
Its life would cost the enemy dear
Whether captured or not white can't stop mate
He sees the problem
But much too late
For he lives in the house that Jack built.
To play through the game CLICK HERE
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Mother Goose must have been forgotten at the Dubai Olympiad in 1986, too, because an analogous situation cropped up there.
In the diagrammed position Murray Chandler's rook at e5 is sheltering his king from Rubens Filguth's bishop. Filguth's threatened discovered check looked dangerous but would be one move too late to help. Meanwhile his poor old overworked rook (keeping one eye on the back rank and the other on the g-file) was totally unable to cope with Chandler's 30 ...g3. If 31 fxg3, f2 wins immediately, and if 31 Rxg3 Re1, 32 Rg1 Qg2#
Here is the bishop shaven and shorn,
That stands by the queen, now so forlorn,
As the cocky pawn walks up to fight
Able to challenge the castle's might
That sits in the house that Jack built.
To play through the game CLICK HERE
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Here's a famous position in which Rudolf Spielmann caught the great David Janowski off guard. Janowski's queen seemed to have everything covered until Spielmann shifted the position for exchanging rooks.
This is the pawn that sheltered the king
And the queen and the rook both waited to spring
To defend the pawn in the coming fight
But everything fell to a check by white
For they lived in a house that Jack built.
To play through the game CLICK HERE
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It takes only one careless move for a game to be lost and black's queen found herself severely discombobulated when Saviely Tartakower checked Gabriel Wood's king at Hastings, 1946.
This is the queen
Who found it hard
To save herself
And the rook she must guard
When the white queen checked
And drew her away
So a zwischenzug could win the day
For she lived in the house that Jack built
To play through the game CLICK HERE
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Herman Steiner's knight seemed to be well defended until Sammy Reshevsky popped the question in this game from the 1942 U.S. Championship in New York.
This is the rook that stood on his own
To guard both the bishop and knight alone
But the white horse leapt and the bishop fell
And then black's knight was lost as well
For they lived in the house that Jack built.
To play through the game CLICK HERE
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Our nursery rhyme must take us all the way back to 1902 for this game in which Harry Nelson Pillsbury caught Siegbert Tarrasch napping. In this case Tarrasch's king chose to guard not only a pawn on f7 as well as the vacant h7 square.. It all proved to be a little overpowering and the His Majesty succumbed the vapours.
Here is the pawn with a king nearby
And a rook with mischief in his eye
Who checked the king
Who left the pawn
That was gobbled with glee
By the powerful queen
Who smashed the house that Jack built.
To play through the game CLICK HERE
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So there you have it—the wisdom of the ages displayed on the chessboard for all to see. With the Rooty Hill Open starting soon I'm going to spend the winter evenings curled up with a copy of Mother Goose – or maybe there are some hidden tactics in the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson.
—Story: David Evans
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