John Odin Howard Taylor vs NN (1862) Highway to Hell

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John Odin Howard Taylor vs NN
"Highway to Hell" (game of the day Apr-19-2024)
London (1862), London ENG
Bishop's Opening: Boden-Kieseritsky Gambit (C27) · 1-0

ANALYSIS [x]

FEN COPIED

Given 26 times; par: 18 [what's this?]

Annotations by Stockfish (Computer). [35437 more games annotated by Stockfish]

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Feb-13-06		Autoreparaturwerkbau: Queen returns home to mate cracked king-on-expedition.

Aug-31-06		kevin86: After the fifth move,white announced mate in eight moves!! The announced moves were actually more than the rest of the game!! Add to that,white's queen starts the attack by moving to h5----and ends it by returning to d1!

Aug-31-06		WannaBe: And the black king wonders: "What am I doing out here?"

Sep-05-06		Wayneowl: I was told this game was known as 'Sleepless Knights'

Dec-20-06		Rubenus: Nice combination but black played very badly (Nc5?, f6??).

Oct-02-07		Infohunter: <Rubenus: Nice combination but black played very badly (Nc5?, f6??).> Well, 4...Nc5 was the loser. The move 5...f6 is at least plausible, since a) 5...d6 fails against 6. Bxf7+ Ke7 7. Nd5# (Légal's mate without the sham Queen sac!); b) 5...Nc6 likewise fails against 6. Bxf7+ Ke7 7. Nd5+ Kd6 8. Nc4#; c) 5...Qe7 leads to 6. Bxf7+ Kd8 7. d4!, and if now 7...d6 then 8. Nd5, Qh4 9. Nf3 etc. Relatively "best" seems 5...Ne6 (third move for this poor critter!), but Black still has an inferior game, having one badly placed Knight developed, as against three well-placed minor pieces on White's side. Much better than 4...Nc5 would have been the standard Boden-Kieseritzky Gambit move 4...Nxc3. Better still might have been 4...Nc6, transposing into a variation of the Four Knights' Game which slightly favors Black.

Oct-03-07		Infohunter: <Relatively "best" seems 5...Ne6 (third move for this poor critter!)...> Oops! Make that "fourth move".

Sep-08-08		RoyalFlush: Umm, was Qh5+ really necessary here? White goes on to checkmate simply by 6. Bf7

Sep-08-08		OBIT: Actually, 6. Qh5+ is more forcing. If 6. Bf7+ is played immediately, then after 6...Ke7 7. Nd5+ Kd6 8. Nc4+ Kc6 9. Nb4+ Kb5, and if 10. a4+, Black has 10...Nxa4. Posting the queen on h5 takes away ...Nxa4 - the knight is pinned after the Black king is pulled to b5 (heh heh).

Jun-22-22		Jonathan Sarfati: 1.e4 e5 2.♘f3 ♘f6 3.♗c4 ♘xe4 4.♘c3 ♘c5? (one of the worst moves here. Black can accept the gambit with {4...Nxc3 with careful play, or 4...Nc6 5.Nxe4 d5 regaining the piece with the ‘fork trick’, or 4...Nf6 returning the P with 5.Nxe5 d5 gaining a tempo with an equal position. The game retreat did not cover d5, so this line was unavailable.) 5.Nxe5 f6?? (allows mate by force. 5...Ne6 was essential but White is still much better after 6 d4 with a big lead in development. Black's best is probably 6...♗b4 7.O-O O-O 8.f4, and the ♘e6 is badly placed. 6...d6? allows 7.♘xf7! ♔xf7 8.O-O and Black can't unravel before White brings in reinforcements, e.g. 8...g6 9.f4 ♔g7 10.f5 gxf5 11.♖xf5 ♖g8 12.♖h5 ♔h8 13.♖xh7+ ♔xh7 14.♕h5+ ♔g7 15.♗h6+ ♔f6 16.♘d5#, or 8..c6 9.d5) 6.♕h5+ g6 (6... ♔e7 allows an even faster mate.) and White mates in a forced sequence, as per the game.

Oct-29-23		FSR: Horrific opening play by Black, as <Jonathan Sarfati> explained, but an amusing finish.

Apr-19-24		VictorVonDoom: Till move 4, the game is ok, then after that, black makes a mistake and a terrible blunder to lose the game. Instead of Nc5, black should have exchanged the knights and after this, white would have a double pawn weakness which black could exploit later. click for larger view After this, f6 is a terrible blunder. Every chess player knows that the f7 and f2 squares are the weakest squares on chess board. After this, moving either the knight or the bishop to the f7 square seems like an attractive move, but this misses the actual mating sequence which begins with Qh5! After this, the bishop can be brought to the f7 square and the black king can be walked all the way to the perfect mate on move 13. I suppose the numerous movements of the king in this game contributed to the title-highway to hell. Although, I would like to know the idea of Nc5. Is it a gambit, because it just seems silly to give up a pawn and I see no way to regain it.

Apr-19-24		FearNoseAll: 10 games have been played that ended up with the same mate on the lichess database

Apr-19-24		Autoreparaturwerkbau: 18 years after finding this gem on the shelves of CG, it became the GOTD. Lovely to play through it again after a while. I was 27 then, just wow, how time flies by. That final queen move back to d1 mating the completely exhausted king still amuses me, as it has back in 2006. :)

Apr-19-24		Amarande: Oddly enough I'd just reread Taylor's game collection book, which features the very position after move 5 as a practical exercise in the Appendix (duly noting that mate was to be delivered in 8 moves). I am also now reminded immediately of the queen odds game W Potter vs NN, 1870 which I was first introduced to by the Fireside Book of Chess. How many games do we have in the DB of this kind - ie there is a forced mate, and the point at which the forced mate begins is less than the halfway point of the game? (Of course, someday we may find that is every game, as naturally that would be the case if Chess turns out to be a forced win for either player, but, assuming present understanding)

Apr-19-24		OhioChessFan: Not finding the nexus of the game and the pun....

Apr-19-24		MissScarlett: Wind your nexus in.

Apr-19-24		playground player: How come NN never wins? Maybe he should switch of Chutes & Ladders.

Apr-19-24		beatgiant: <playground player> A quick search shows over 50 times NN wins in our DB, including wins over Philidor, Staunton, Lasker, Pillsbury, Kasparov and Ding. https://www.chessgames.com/perl/che...

Apr-20-24		FSR: <Amarande: . . . naturally that would be the case if Chess turns out to be a forced win for either player> It won't. Chess is a draw with best play. See my award-winning article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First... It is no accident that the vast majority of high-level correspondence games are drawn. See, e.g., last year's USCF Absolute Correspondence Chess Championship - one decisive game, 77 draws. The winner won one game and drew the other eleven. Eleven out of the thirteen of us tied for second with twelve draws each. https://www.iccf.com/event?id=101114

Apr-20-24		FSR: <beatgiant> NN beat me like a drum in F Rhine vs NN, 2020. The guy's been playing for over 500 years. Don't think he hasn't learned a thing or two in that time.

May-11-24		JimmyVermeer: I made a video series on YouTube called the 109 fastest checkmates in chess history. It included games, mostly from this database, where one player forced mate in 7 moves or less. This game is not included, but since the mating combination started before move 7, I would have included this game if I'd known about it at the time.

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