Fond Memories of Rg8

The Nostalgic Rook Move

As brilliant and well deserved as was Kramnik’s victory yesterday against Levon Aronian, one has to say that the mysterious Rg8-theme has probably been around as long as chess has been played. I remember seeing this idea from some games dating from the Paul Morphy epoch, and I would not be surprised if we can hunt down similar usages from the time of Philidor.

Some thirty-odd years ago in a lecture I showed a group of Montreal amateurs a really pleasing example from the 1942 game Gomes vs Neto, Rio de Janeiro. (Images above) that I had first seen in a book on the middle game by Euwe and Kramer (page 66). I want to share this brilliant example with my readers:

Gomes — Neto Rio de Janeiro 1942