He knew. He admitted it on his deathbed. He was just biding time.
conditional moves letting me castle an R that is under attack from an N
whoa! such acting under pressure, that's quite the mettle : ) did he end up winning the game?
There r sooo many funny stories about otb chess games throughout history, even world title matches. I wonder if it was true about Korchnoi and Karpov competing/struggling for leg room under the table and kicking each other so they had to put a board as a partition to separate their legs during one of their world championship matches.
I guess neither won the feet and leg battle, it ended up a draw.
I once read that this situation happened in a Korchnoi game: his opponent castled when his rook passed across a square which was under attack. Then Korchnoi stopped his clock and made a complaint to the arbiter, who stared him with awe, one of the best players in the world didn't know that move was completely legal!