The Queen and the Jackals
Submitted by
Dozy on Thu, 07/03/2008 at 12:11pm.
A jackal could scarcely hope to defeat a lion, but a pack of jackals, attacking from all sides, might well bring down the king of beasts. So it was in the Lidums Australian Open of 1971 when GM Lajos Portisch had the white pieces against the current Australian champion, Fred Flatow.
In the diagram position Portisch had played 9. e5 attacking the black knight. Flatow, probably hoping to establish his knight on d5, played Be6, attacking the queen.
Portisch didn't flinch. Leaving his queen to fend for itself he captured the knight, then black's g7 bishop (forcing Kxg7) before picking up the other bishop on c3.
Now he had a jackal attack and you can play through the game to see how he exploited it.
Black resigned on move 27, but the game may have continued 27...Qd8 28 Nxc6 Qe8 29 Nxe7+ Qxe7 39 Bxa8.
I spoke to Fred about it a couple of years ago and he said that he was familiar with the variation but simply “forgot about it” at the time.
With four visiting grandmasters in the tournament, Portisch went on to win comfortably. (The photograph shows Portisch as he is today.)