The Battle of the Champions in 550 B.C. was fought between the Greek city-states Argos and Sparta. The two city-states agreed that only 300 warriors on each side would fight. It transpired in an open field in plain view for both Argives and Spartans to see. At the end of a long day's fighting, only two Argives and one Spartan were left standing.
Confident in their numerical superiority, the Argives declared themselves victorious and went home. The one surviving Spartan, noting that there was no one else left on the battlefield, declared himself the winner, stripped the enemy dead and went home. Both Argos and Sparta claimed victory, and in the end the matter was resolved in an all-out battle between the full armies of both sides.
It doesn’t take the benefit of hindsight to have seen that the Greeks had missed the obvious. Neither side was willing to lose and would never surrender until actually defeated. In this week’s position, black, too, like the Argives, essentially assumes its material superiority is enough and misses what is in plain sight. With this hint in mind, please try to find white’s mating attack.
White’s rook dominates the important 7th rank. This traps the black king. White’s queen coordinates with the rook and centralizes itself on e5. This threatens queen to g7, mate, and queen takes the black b8 rook, also mate (see next diagram).
Black can delay mate with spite checks, e.g. queen to h1, check, and then rook to a1, check. But the battle is over and black is defeated.
The larger lesson is not to be overconfident and remember the Steven Wright quote, “If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.”
