Blind Swine

Early this month, I wrote about the term "blind swine" as it is used in chess literature with links to Edward Winter's historical inquiries. Logically, it seems to me, rooks on the seventh rank that can find checks, but not checkmate are blind pigs (or swine). Two rooks who cannot find checkmate still might prove their worth as a drawing resource.

This morning, an opening blunder dropped some pawns and I struggled on, reaching a rook ending that should have been hopeless. 

White to move

35.Rb7

I prepared to double my rooks on the seventh. Black cannot prevent this, but can render my rooks ineffective several ways:

35...h5 creates checkmate threats

35...Kh8 allows Rg8 to defend the g-pawn

35...a5 protects on pawn and leaves open the possibility of meeting 36.Rcc7 with Rg4

35...e4??

My opponent made one of the few moves possible to throw away the win.

36.Rcc7 Ra2+ 37.Kh3

Black to move

Black can no longer prevent endless checks from my rooks and the game was drawn by repetition after 37...g5 38.Rg7+ Kf8 39.Rbf7+ Ke8 40.Re7+ Kf8 41.Rgf7+ Kg8 42.Rg7+ Kf8 43.Rgf7+ Kg8 44.Rg7+ Kf8

The Soul of Chess

After dropping a couple of pieces in a ten-minute game, my position was near hopeless. My only chance was the difficulty my opponent faced in finding the correct defense.

White to move

34.Rg1!

The only move to preserve the win.

34.Re1, which looks reasonable on the surface, fails. 34...d2! 35.Rfxe2 Rc1 36.Kg1 Rxe1+ 37.Kf2 d1Q 38.Rxe1 Qd4+ picks up the knight and leaves queen vs. rook with pawns on both sides.

34...Rc1

A desperate gamble.

35.Rxc1 d2 36.Rff1

Black to move

Black can take either rook, but not both. White wins.

In the game, White, with 4 1/2 minutes remaining, spent half a minute and did not find the critical Rg1. He took my rook and then resigned after 34...e1Q+.

One of my students who also did not find 34.Rg1, did find 36.Rff1 after my 34...Rc1?? 34...d2! would have won for Black.

My pawns rolling down the center of the board were inspired by many historic games. My students are seeing the well-known game McDonnell,A. De Labourdonnais, L. 1834

White to move

After 31...Bd8

32.Qc4 Qe1 33.Rc1 d2 34.Qc5 Rg8 35.Rd1 e3 36.Qc3

Black to move

36...Qxd1 37.Rxd1 e2 0-1

I am also showing students the end of  Petrosian,T. -- Fischer,R. 1958

Black to move

63...Kd2 64.Rxc2+ Kxc2 65.Kg5 c4 66.f6 c3 67.f7

Here Fischer offered a draw and Petrosian agreed, but with my students, we carry the game further to assure than they understand why the resulting queen vs. c-pawn endgame is a draw.

Of course, François-André Danican Philidor's analysis in Analyse du jeu des Échecs (1849) also inspired my play. It was in this book that Philidor offered his famous line, "pawns are the soul of chess."

White to move

38.f7 Rf8 39.Nf4+ Kg7 40.Bh5 and White's pawns cannot be stopped.

Checkmate Pattern: Two Pigs

The pattern that I call Two Pigs is usually referred to as the “Blind Swine Mate”. It is an unfortunate and illogical term that violates an unsourced quote credited to Dawid Markelowicz Janowsky (1868-1927). The unsourced quote has been in circulation at least since 1953, the original publishing date of The Art of Attack in Chess.

“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.

White to move

39.Rff7??

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

29.a6

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

21.O-O?

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".