“The pair of rooks which “grunt out check” on the seventh rank but cannot get a sight of mate were once nicknamed ‘blind swine’ by Janowski” (Victor Vukovic, The Art of Attack in Chess [1993], 73).
If they are blind, they do not find checkmate.
I knew less about the history of this pattern name when I created my self-published A Checklist of Checkmates twenty years ago. The contents of page 15:
Edward Winter often has written about the appalling number of unsourced quotes in chess literature.* Regarding the Janowsky quote, see Chess Notes 3494, 3525, and 5160 (scroll down). The last of these was prompted by my correspondence with Winter, noting two instances when Janowsky had two rooks on the seventh rank and could manage only a draw. Although the quote is unsourced, one can imagine Janowsky grumbling about pigs that cannot see checkmate. However, in the game that I cited in A Checklist of Checkmates, his blind pigs saved an otherwise lost game.
Such was my idea in a blitz game yesterday, when blind to the advantage that I had, I set up a draw that was not forced until my opponent returned the favor.
Such was my idea in a blitz game yesterday, when blind to the advantage that I had, I set up a draw that was not forced until my opponent returned the favor.
White to move
39.Rc8+ Kd7 40.Rg8+- was the winning line.
39...b1Q??
After 39...Rxe4+, Black still gets a queen, while White's blind swine cannot force a draw.
40.Rfe7+ and the game was quickly drawn by repetition as Black cannot escape endless checks.
In another online game in July, I was on the receiving end of the Two Pigs checkmate, except that in this case another piece (knight or king) was needed, and so the pattern is not the same.
White to move
This desperate try failed.
29.Rxd5 was another possibility that fails.
29...b6 30.Rc1 Rg2+ 31.Kh1
31.Kf1 Ne3+ 32.Ke1 Rbe2#
This is a pattern that Raf Mesotten, The Checkmate Pattens Manual (2022) calls Vukovic's Mate (45-49). It appears to be an instructive book, but like every other book on the subject, it passes on common attributions grounded in bad history and unsourced quotes (see "Pillsbury's Mate"). To Mesotten's credit, he notes clearly that his sources for the pattern names were chessgames.com, Wikipedia, and Chess Tempo (7).
31...Rxh2+ 32.Kg1 Rbg2+ and I resigned as a knight-assisted "Ladder mate" was coming.
The Two Pigs Mate pattern appears in this game played on Internet Chess Club in 2001.
White to move
White is much worse, but castling here gives Black a forced mate in three, which I promptly executed.
21...Rgxg2+ 22.Kh1 Rxh2+ 23.Kg1 Rcg2#
*I also have some articles on the topic and related topics, such as "Plagiarism and Related Crimes".
