The Legal Trap or Blackburne Trap is a chess opening trap named after French Player Sire de Legal in the 1700’s and used widely by Joseph Henry Blackburne in the 19th Century. This trap features a queen sacrifice by White followed by check mate with minor pieces if Black accepts the sacrifice.
The study of the Legal Trap forms a solid basis of development for an aspiring chess player in identifying and exploiting the patterns of the Trap in various situations. We will look at this trap in various aspects and learn how psychological tricks can be deployed against unsuspecting opponents.
The following is the natural move sequence in many of the ways the trap can arise. The combination below was a sequence of moves from a simultaneous exhibition in Paris. Andre Cheron, one of France’s leading players won with the trap against Jeanlose:
The game below between Legal and Saint Brie was played by Legal at Rook odds. In that he played without the rook on a1:
In studying the Legal Trap it is instructive to understand the patterns in the position and the arising combinations as a result. We take a look below at how Black had the opportunity to exploit the Legal trap:
We take a look below at a game between British GM Nigel Short and talented Belarusian GM Viktor Kupreichik. We look at the game up to move 13 from the Ruy Lopez, Bird’s Defense opening. It is instructive in observing how the position arises to give an opportunity to exploit the Legal Trap with slight variations:
We take another look at the Legal Mate arising out of the positions from the Gorings Gambit in the Scotch Game. This was a casual game arranged as a display of Living Chess in Act II of Der Seekadet in the year 1847. Thus it was aptly named the “Sea-Cadet” Mate:
In closing, we observe the following execution in all patterns of the Legal Mate:
#1) The King’s weakness – on f7 for Black and f2 for White is the main target.
#2) The minor pieces (Knights and Bishops) are in positions to exploit the weakness.
#3) The Queen is used as the bait to hypnotize the opponent in making the blunder
#4) The minimum damage the side who falls for the trap can limit to is the loss of a pawn with no compensation and even at times giving the opponent strong positional play due to the advancements arising as a result of the combinations.
