The chess board imagination is both fascinating and limitless with bizarre endings that even many AI cannot fathom let alone humans. As Tal once said you have to take your opponent to a deep dark forest where 1+1=3. Well, as one wades and plods through games scything plantains of ply and trimming thorns with machete, one is privileged enough to witness the magical jesters and elves of 64 squares choreographed into abstract notations. One gets sucked into a wormhole of oddities and hyperspace of mystery in Oz land. Loquacious intro aside, here are 5 bizarre curiosities from chess!
1. En passant checkmate
First we have an en passant checkmate. The following game is taken from Gunnar Gundersen and AH Faul which took place way back in 1928 at Australia. There are times when a black king (generally) is chased all the way from the other end of the board down to white's regiments and finally, the coup de grace is given with a brilliant castling. However, en passant checkmate is a rarity. (For what its worth, as a fervent fan of stalemate, I wondered if a player is out of moves, could a final en passant result in a stalemate. I am not sure if that certain example exist, but I did find the following.)
This bizarre oddity is from the big G Maurice Ashley himself. The following link from his YouTube channel at 4:58 mark showcases a game from Mitrofanov and Korolkov with a triple pawn stacked in one file waiting like an armada of Portuguese man o'war about to promote one after another. Except...
Well I would leave the big man to kibitz it himself.
Here is a snapshot of the starting position. White to draw. Full of recursions and queen sacrifices!
https://lichess.org/study/4NIw9yjx/LM19P3kK
3. Mystery fork
In this example from the channel of a website (that shant be named) highlights an unusual fork which took place between Mannheimer and a shadowy figure who will forever be incognito. It is a self-fork but of the most unusual kind where not only it apparently botches up the whole advantage at first glance, but in reality actually steamrolls both rooks.
Honestly I still don't know my zugzwangs from zwischenzungs along with my carrots from peas if not other prophylactic moves.
As the author writes, zugzwang is:
...a kind of paradoxical situation where one player is put at disadvantage because they must make a move when they would prefer instead to pass and not move. Less understood perhaps is the idea of mutual or reciprocal zugzwang which is a more special case where the position is such that whoever is to move is in zugzwang. In other words, the outcome of a position in mutual zugzwang hangs entirely on the question of whose turn it is to play. Let us analyse a simple pawn ending to grasp the concept better.
As the caption states, White to move and win. Among all the possible moves dotted on the board, there is only one correct answer.
Honorable mention: Defense hallmark
While not exactly an oddity, but I thought I would throw a game from my archive for good measure. Although I had a +8 material advantage, I threw it all way because my opponent played extremely craftily finding the right moves where his king could not be checked or forked. This is probably one of the best example of defense I ever saw during my stint here. (Spoiler alert: I got lucky and won on time.)
