Chess Still Surprises

The other day I had an interesting surprise where I learned something that contradicted my understanding of chess endgame situations. For a while now I have understood the 'insufficient material' rules of chess, recognising that when a king is alone there are only certain combinations of pieces sufficient to checkmate the opponent. For example; a king versus a king and knight is a forced draw (etc).

I was mindlessly playing through the chess.com preset 'drills' in the learning tab and if I am honest, I was doing it against a beginner level CPU to have some quick mindless chess and to obtain a pointless, yet somehow appealing achievement on the site for completing all drills. (Slightly shameful, perhaps!)

The drill in question had this starting position:

Within two moves or so I captured the opponents pawn and unexpectedly the game didn't draw! I was perplexed and initially suspected a bug, but then I considered the fact that I had probably never been in this position and wondered if checkmate was indeed possible. The challenge in my head then, became to figure out the scenario where this game could be won by either player, so off I went to the analysis board to figure it out.

This became a unique chess puzzle of sorts, but admittedly not a terribly difficult one. Should you want to take up the challenge, have a look for yourself before you scroll to the image of the position below:

The result is a 'smothered mate' with the knight of sorts, where the king covers some of the escape squares and the opponent's knight haplessly stands on the only other square the king could escape by.

However, in contrast to bishop, knight and king v king, or two bishops and king v king, there is no forced mate. In fact, I think your opponent would have to just about be trying to lose, but I was amazed to discover something new that I didn't know was possible!

Naturally, I wondered then whether the same thing was possible for king and bishop versus king and bishop and I quickly worked out that an almost identical position can be reached, but unless I am mistaken, it is only with opposite coloured bishops:

There have been moments in my chess journey where I have had other eye opening discoveries, like the average chess player has when they learn about pawn promotion, castling (both sides!) and the earth shattering en passant. So, while this discovery is not a game changer like those intricacies, it was nice to get a new surprise out of the depths of a game I have become increasingly well versed in. Therefore, should I ever find myself in this position over the board, I am armed with the knowledge that I can play on in the hope I can somehow lure my opponent into this 'trap'.

My parting thought then, has to be sparing a thought for any unfortunate soul in the history of the game that has actually run afoul of this extremely improbably, faintly ridiculous, but entirely possible checkmate pattern... Surely not, but at least now I know it could happen.