The Most Devastating Tactic in Chess

The windmill is a tactic in which a combination of discovered checks and regular checks by a rook and a bishop can win massive amounts of material. In a famous game between my hero Lasker and Torre (1925 Torre Attack), Torre sacrifices his queen in order to set up a windmill which churns through all of Lasker's pieces, and wins the queen with the final check. This extremely rare tactic occurred in a game I played recently, echoing the Lasker Torre match. I sacrificed the Queen for a knight, in order to get the windmill churning. I had the pleasure of playing this rare and beautiful tactic against a friend of mine (you know who you are), yet I was only able to emerge from the windmill with a draw.

Not included in most tactics books, the windmill is the unsung hero of complex chess strategy. The tactic is not listed in Combination Challenge, Winning Chess Tactics for Juniors, Can You Be a Tactical Chess Genius, Pandolfini's Chess Challenges, or 303 Tricky Chess Tactics, however, there is a chapter dedicated to it in Seirawan's Chess Tactics.