🔥If you Play Chess 👉 YOU MUST SEE This Game.

In this position, something happens that had never been seen before in more than 500 years of chess history. The idea is that white wants to deliver checkmate on g7, but lacks a piece on h6 to support the queen. It's a fairly common setup. However, it is precisely at this moment that Nigel Short executes a unique and spectacular sequence of moves. Can you guess what white is trying to do? If you can't see it yet, don't worry. Join me as we relive this shocking game that, according to chess.com, is ranked as the 7th greatest of all time. I promise, by the end, you'll be amazed by white's maneuver. Nigel Short with the white pieces opens with 1 e4. His opponent, Jean Timmon, replies with the alakind defense, playing knight f6. The game follows familiar paths. The pawn advances to e5, hitting the knight, which moves to d5. Then the center is reinforced with d4. Now, since this center is very strong, it must be counterattacked, so black replies with d6. Then the knight develops to f3 to reinforce it. Black's development continues with g6 to fianchetto the bishop, while the white bishop goes to c4, hitting the knight, which retreats to b6, after which, the bishop also drops back to b3. Now the black bishop reaches g7. At this moment, black is threatening to exchange everything on e5, followed by a queen trade, so white prevents it by moving the queen to e2. Play continues with the knight developing to c6, after which, white castles. And let me ask you a question. If, for example, black were to play bishop g4, pinning the knight and putting pressure on these two points, how would you answer? Well, in this case, the bishop on g4 is unprotected, and the point f7 is under attack. White can respond with bishop takes f7, check, because after the king captures, knight g5 check follows, and then the piece is recovered, with a very large advantage for white. We have already studied this tactical theme in another video, in case you want to go deeper. Therefore, let us step back. Black does not make the mistake of playing bishop g4, and instead castles. Now, once castled, that move really is a threat, so short prevents it by playing h3. Black decides to advance the a-pawn to a5. They threaten to keep pushing and trap the bishop, but this is immediately stopped with a4. After this, the a-pawns are exchanged, and with that pawn on e5, white gets a more comfortable game thanks to the space advantage. So Timmon decides to begin a peace trading maneuver, starting with knight d4. For short, there are no real options. The knight must be captured, the queen recaptures, and now the point e5 is attacked twice, so it has to be defended with rook e1. At this point, the first player could at some moment play e6, which would wreck black's entire pawn structure. For that reason, Timmon decides to prevent it forever by playing e6, but this move has a drawback. It weakens the f6 square, and although that may not seem to matter, but positional factors play out in the medium and long term. Later, we will see the impact of this weakness on the game. For the moment, the development must be completed, so the knight goes to d2. The idea of this move is that after Timmon plays knight d5, the knight goes to f3 with the goals of driving the queen off d4, reinforcing the defense of the pawn on e5, and heading toward the kingside to attack. The threatened queen moves to c5, while the white queen goes to e4. The idea of this move is, of course, to bring the queen dangerously over to the kingside to start the attack. For example, white wants to move the queen to h4, place the bishop on h6, and possibly continue with knight g5, a typical attacking idea against the castled king. Black, to stop this plan, decides to propose a queen trade by moving to b4. Short, to avoid the trade, bravely opts for a strange maneuver, interposes the bishop on c4. After the knight retreats to b6, attacking it, b3 defends. With this, short accepts that after the knight captures, the recapture will be with the pawn, damaging white's pawn structure, but keeping the queens on the board to preserve attacking chances. After this, white is threatening bishop a3 to win the exchange. So black replies by moving the rook to e8. Now let us notice an important habit of top-level players. For example, we could continue with our plan by playing queen h4, but if we did, the bishop would develop to d7 and then settle comfortably on c6. That is why, before launching the attack, short first plays rook d1, occupying the open file and also preventing the development of the opponent's bishop. The game continues with the queen retreating to c5, and now the white queen does go on the attack, moving to h4. Since the queen has moved away from this diagonal, Timmon looks to develop the bishop with b6. On the other hand, the white bishop develops to e3, hitting the queen, which continues to retreat to the square c6. Short begins to occupy the dark squares around the opposing castled king with bishop h6. Notice that if the black bishop captures the white bishop, the queen will recapture, and knight g5 will follow with an unstoppable attack. Therefore, Mr. Timmon decides to avoid the exchange of bishops, pulling his back to h8. Now observe. The bishop is already attacking, the queen as well. The knight is excellently placed, and one rook sits on the open file. However, the other rook is still out of play, so it must be activated. To do so, white first moves the rook to d8 so that, when the bishop moves to b7, allowing the black rooks to connect, this white rook can re-enter the game by shifting to d1. Let us begin to see how all the white pieces are perfectly placed, completely dominating the board. At this point, note something important. With this white rook having penetrated into the position, black has a weakness on the 8th rank. For example, black could not trade rooks because queen takes d8 would follow, and the king would be caught in a mating net. Therefore, Timmon, to get out of this tactical issue, decides to bring his bishop back to g7. So now, with black managing to neutralize that 8th rank weakness and threatening to trade bishops and trade everything on d8, short is no longer interested in exchanging rooks, so the rook returns to d7, keeping complete control of the file and of the 7th rank. Now there is a threat to trade the bishops and, after the king recaptures, the queen would enter on f6 with check, followed by taking on f7. Therefore, Timmon, to prevent it, moves the rook to f8 to defend. Either way, the bishops are exchanged, the king recaptures, and the queen lands on f6 with check. Do you remember many moves ago when we said that the advance, e6, had weakened this square? Well, 15 moves later, we are seeing the consequences. The king returns to where it was, and now the rook moves to d4 so that, if needed, it can join the attack along the file while also defending the weak pawn on c4. Black continues with rook e8, bringing the last missing piece into the game, although it is already going to be too late. The white attack continues with h4. The idea is to push the pawn to h5. If it is captured, the king will be completely exposed and quickly mated, and if it is not captured, then the pawn will go to h6 and deliver mate on g7. To avoid this, Timmon decides to stop the advance by playing h5. And we have thus arrived at one of the most spectacular moments in the entire history of chess. Let us break it down step by step. Notice how the white pieces are perfectly placed on their best squares. The queen, very menacing, is close to the black king. The rooks dominate the only open file and press hard on the 7th rank. The knight on f3 prevents any attack along the diagonal against the point g2. And if all the pieces are perfectly placed, then what do we play? Well, let us ask Stockfish and see what move it recommends. The analysis engine indicates that, with an evaluation of plus 46, the best move is king h2, precisely the move Nigel Short played at the board. Two exclamation marks for that move! The first time I saw this game, I thought it was a totally normal prophylactic move to improve the king's position. But the true intention of this move was much more hidden. At this point, according to many analysts, the defense that offered the most resistance for black was to retreat the bishop to c8, hitting the rook. However, since the bishop moves off this diagonal, the engine says that Short also wins by playing knight g5. After the rook is captured, the strong move g4 follows, completely opening the king's shelter. For example, if the pawn captures, then h5 follows, again threatening h6. And if the pawn captures again, the queen goes to h6, and mate against the black king cannot be avoided in a few moves. So let us step back. This was in case black had chosen their best defense, which was to retreat the bishop to that square. But Jean Timmon did not choose that move, and, instead of putting the bishop on c8, he placed the rook on c8. After this, the king, strangely, moved to g3. It is still not entirely clear what for. It seems white has no defined plan, and is just shuffling pieces. Therefore, the rook returned to the square e8, where it had been before. And after this, the white idea took on much clearer shape when the king continued his march, moving to f4. Two exclamation marks for this move! Black, a bit stunned, now finally decided to return the bishop to c8, trying to chase away the rook. But by now, it is all far too late, because the king's march continues to the square g5. Note that the black king cannot go to h7, because the pawn on f7 would be captured, and mate would follow, more or less as it happens in the game. And if, for example, instead of moving the king to h7, Timmon decides to capture the rook, then the white king incredibly reaches the square h6, and mate on g7 on the next move cannot be prevented. For this reason, the player Jean Timmon had already decided to resign a move earlier. In millions and millions of games, nothing like this has ever been seen. I hope you enjoyed it. See you in the next video!