A windmill is a special type of discovered attack that can be used to win large amounts of material through repeated discovered checks. This ultra-powerful tactic can devastate an opponent, as its constant barrage of checks severely restricts their movement and prevents them from being able to defend any pieces except their king.
To see how damaging a windmill can be, we’ll take a look at a game between two famous players – Carlos Torre and Emanuel Lasker – where a nasty windmill led to Lasker’s defeat.
A Winning Windmill
Grandmaster Carlos Torre played White in this game, and Emanuel Lasker, the second world chess champion, played Black.
Initially, Torre appeared to fall behind after Lasker captured his queen on h5. But Torre had a plan in mind: a relentless series of attacks that would not only make up for the loss of his queen, but place him in the lead.
Torre takes advantage of his pin on the g7 pawn by capturing it with his rook and delivering check. The king has no choice but to evade the check by moving to h8, after which Torre captures the f7 pawn with his rook and exposes the white king to a discovered check from the f6 bishop. Each time the king steps out of the bishop’s path, Torre’s rook returns to check him again, capturing more and more material each time it departs thanks to the bishop’s unstoppable discovered check:
By the time his queen was captured, Lasker was starting to get low on material and had become frustrated by his position. He resigned a few moves later.
