Classic Chess Games: Adams-Torre Back Rank Mate

This 1920 game between Mexican Grandmaster Carlos Torre and amateur player Edwin Z. Adams helps students develop their ability to calculate attackers and defenders while also demonstrating a core tenet of good sportsmanship: never underestimating your opponent.

The Adams-Torre Game

Adams played as White, while Torre played Black. 

By this point in the game, Adams has assembled a battery–two or more pieces that can move in the same direction aligned on the same rank, file, or diagonal–with his pair of rooks on the e-file, which he’s hoping to use to deliver a back-rank checkmate. There’s just one problem: Torre has one more defender (two rooks and a queen) than Adams does attackers (two rooks), so the attack will fail if Adams attempts it now:

White's two attackers are circled in blue, while Black's three defenders are circled in red.

To make sure his attack results in a checkmate, Adams needs to remove one of Torre’s defenders before charging ahead. Removing a defender doesn't always mean capturing it; sometimes "deflection," a tactic that forces a defending piece to move to another square and abandon its defensive duties, is enough to allow a player to overpower their opponent. 

Adams targets the black queen and makes a series of attempted queen sacrifices to try to deflect Torre’s queen off of the diagonal she sits on. If he can successfully push her onto another path, she will lose her ability to defend the back rank pieces, and Adams can send his rooks up to the eighth rank for mate:

Following a barrage of attacks on his queen that culminates in a fork of his queen and rook, Torre resigns, handing Adams the win.