Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Réti’s Mate

This post is a collaboration with my friend Misha who is a true chess enthusiast.
I met him at Nairobi Chess Club (NCC) where he served as a Committee Member, Director of Play for five years and trained the young members.

Réti’s Mate is named after a game played in Vienna, in 1910, between two chess legends of the 20th century: Richard Réti and Savielly Tartakower. The game became famous because of its final combination. That combination involved a devilish queen sacrifice and concluded with an astonishing checkmate. It was a free game where Réti and Tartakower played for a stake of ten crowns.

It is a checkmating pattern that involves a Rook and a Bishop. The Bishop, supported by the Rook, checkmates the opponent’s king which is blocked by its own pieces and pawns without any chance to escape.

The game features the so-called Classical Variation in the Caro-Kann Defense

This checkmate is well known by many experienced players and it’s present in many chess puzzle collections. It is so famous that even appeared in one episode of the Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit”. The action takes place when the main character of the film (Beth Harmon) plays against Mr. Granz (president of a local chess club). Both players reproduce in the film the same moves as in the Reti-Tartakower game.

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