The British have always reserved a rather prominent place in their fiction for boarding schools. From Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby all the way to Rowling’s Harry Potter series. It is in this tradition that our current subject fits. It deals with a boy who is sent to an old and prestigious boarding school with the improbable name of Slaughterhouse. On the site, fracking operations are being put in place.1 Consequences will never be the same.
This boarding school also has four different houses — because of Harry Potter, no doubt. One of them is for the bright kids and the obvious way to display someone’s brightness is by having them play chess.
They’re playing in a crowded hall with no kind of barrier between the board and the public. In fact, there’s half a dozen people crowding over the black side. All of that suggest a very informal game. But there’s an enormous demonstration board on the wall!2 And the position seems to be this one:3
Admittedly, the bishop on d2 is mostly an assumption on my part, but not an unreasonable one. White is shown playing the knight back, which causes great distress among the whole crowd of black players. Probably, white played Nf3 and the black players, who are presumably all idiots, only then noticed they’d lose their queen. Obviously, that wouldn’t work without the bishop on d2.
That makes sense, too. You can hardly expect to trap a queen without the church’s support.
Realism: 3/5 Black has — besides the material deficit — a dreadful position, but it seems like he played the French, so that’s normal. But there are a few oddities. For example, I don’t really understand how the second white pawn got to the c-file or why the black queen wandered off so far.
Probable winner: White, as she’s about to win a queen. And perhaps she also has a bishop more.
1. [That’s one of those sentences, like “lets’ split up!”, that never leads to anything good in movies.] ↩
2. [And no one operating it, it seems.] ↩
3. [Apronus diagram editor rulez!] ↩