Classic Chess Games: Alekhine and the Great Pin

To conclude our series on pins, we’re going to take a look at a famous game where a pin led to the formation of a battery so powerful it received its own name: Alekhine’s Gun.

This 1930 tournament game was played between Alexander Alekhine, the fourth world chess champion, and Aron Nimzowitsch, one of the strongest players of the era and the author of “My System,” one of the most famous and influential chess books ever written.

Alekhine vs. Nimzowitsch

Alekhine played White in this game, and Nimzowitsch played Black.

By move 21, Alekhine had pinned Nimzowitsch’s knight to his queen:

Pinned pieces are vulnerable to mounting pressure from additional attackers, and Alekhine went on to show how quickly this pressure can cause an opponent to crumble. He began by moving his rook from a1 to c1, creating a battery on the c-file:

As Nimzowitsch shuffled his pieces around in a series of waiting moves, unable to make any forward progress, Alekhine moved his queen behind the two rooks on the c-file to form the ultra-powerful battery that would come to be known as Alekhine’s gun. 

With all three of his opponent’s strongest pieces aligned and aiming at his pinned knight–as well as the bishop that first made the pin–Nimzowitsch tried to fight back by sacrificing his b-pawn and involving his king, but he soon ran out of ways to salvage the game. He was in zugzwang, a German term for a situation in which a player has to move, but any move they make will worsen their position. Once Alekhine began to advance his kingside pawns, Nimzowitsch resigned.