Wei Yi's Windmill at the Samarkand Olympiad

Illustration. Not a photograph of this game. The people, scoreboard, clock times and positions shown are not a record of the match.

For eight moves in a row, Black's queen did nothing but hop between a8 and b8. It was not a plan. Once the queen was in the corner, it had nowhere else to go.

That is what happened to Aleksandar Indjic in round 4 of the Olympiad in Samarkand, and the man on the other side of the board was Wei Yi. Chess players call the pattern a windmill, and it is one of the best tricks in chess to learn, because you can use it in your own games.

Wei Yi 1-0 Aleksandar Indjic 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad, Samarkand 2026 · Open Section, Round 4 · 19 September 2026 White: Wei Yi, China (2752) · Black: Indjic, Serbia (2598) · Opening: Petroff Defence

A quiet start, then a slow squeeze

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6

This is the Petroff Defence. Instead of defending his e5 pawn, Black attacks White's e4 pawn right back. It is a solid, careful opening.

There were no early fireworks. Both sides developed their pieces, and the rooks were traded on move 11.

The real game starts on the kingside. Look at the pawns Wei Yi pushed:

18.g4 ... 19.c5 ... 23.f4 ... 25.f5

Each pawn move takes squares away from Black. A pawn on f5 controls e6 and g6, so no black piece can land there. A pawn on c5 controls b6 and d6 and cramps the queenside. Chess players call this space, and it works like a tightening belt. Nothing is threatened yet. Black just has fewer and fewer comfortable squares.

By move 26 you can see the effect. Black's bishop had gone back to c8 and his knight had gone back to b8. Both pieces were on the back rank, doing very little.

Move 31: the queen walks onto a dangerous line

This is the position after Black's 31st move.

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Position after 31...Qc7. White to play. Look at the diagonal from g3 up to Black's queen on c7.

Find the black queen on c7. Now draw a line from it down and to the right: d6, e5, f4, g3, h2. That is a diagonal. On e5 and f4 stand two white knights. Behind them, on h4, is a white bishop that is one step from g3.

Right now the two knights are blocking the bishop. If both knights get out of the way and the bishop reaches g3, the bishop attacks the queen. Getting out of the way is easy. Getting out of the way with a threat of their own is the clever part, because it gives Black no time to answer.

The idea has a name. When one piece moves and opens a line for a piece behind it, that is a discovered attack. You already know the basic version: a knight steps aside and a bishop suddenly stares at the king. Wei Yi is about to do it to a queen.

Move 32: giving up a knight

32.Nxf7

The knight on e5 takes the pawn on f7 and gives itself up. Black has two ways to take it: with the rook (32...Rxf7) or with the king (32...Kxf7). Both are legal.

Stockfish 17.1, a strong chess engine, searching to a fixed depth, prefers the rook capture. After the king capture Black is roughly a pawn worse off than after the rook capture. Indjic took with the rook.

32...Rxf7 33.Ne6

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Position after 33.Ne6. The knight attacks the queen on c7, and f4 is now empty.

Two things happened at once. The second knight jumped from f4 to e6 and attacks the queen on c7. And by leaving f4, it cleared part of the diagonal for the bishop.

The queen has to move. Indjic played 33...Qb8, which keeps the queen on the same diagonal.

Engine check: at this moment the engine liked 33...Nxc5 better, grabbing the c5 pawn with a threat against the knight on e6. It rates that move about a pawn and a half better for Black than the queen move. Nobody would call 33...Qb8 a blunder, but it is where the engine's view of the game moves most in White's favour.

The windmill

34.Bg3

The bishop lands on g3 and attacks the queen on b8 along the diagonal. Look at what is in the way. Nothing. The two knights have both gone.

Black chose 34...Qa8. The queen retreats into the corner. The engine rates 34...Nxc5 as about equally good here, so the shuffle itself cost Black little. The damage had been done a move earlier.

35.Nc7

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Position after 35.Nc7. The knight attacks the queen on a8, and the bishop on g3 protects the knight.

Study this position, because this is the whole trick.

The knight on c7 attacks the queen on a8. Where can the queen go? Black's own pawns on a7 and b7 block the file and the diagonal, and his own bishop on c8 blocks the rank beyond b8. The queen has exactly one legal square: b8. (Black could ignore the queen, but that would lose it.)

Can Black capture the knight? The queen on b8 could take on c7, but the bishop on g3 guards c7, so the queen would be lost for a knight. The rook on f7 would love to take it too, but Black's own knight on d7 is standing in the way of the rook.

So 35...Qb8. And now the knight steps aside again.

36.Ne6

The knight leaves c7 and the diagonal opens. The bishop attacks the queen. The queen goes back to a8. Then 37.Nc7 attacks it again, and it goes back to b8.

That is the windmill. The knight swings out, the bishop attacks. The knight swings back, the queen is attacked again. Round and round.

Here is why a windmill is so strong: every swing is a threat, so Black has almost no free moves. He cannot easily untangle his pieces or bring the rook and knight to help. Mostly he can only answer the threat.

The free pawn

The windmill repeated on moves 35, 37, 39 and 41, four trips to c7 in all. But Wei Yi did not just spin. On move 38 he did something cleverer.

38.Nxd5

The knight on c7 did not swing to e6. It captured the pawn on d5 instead. By leaving c7 it opened the diagonal, so the bishop still attacks the queen on b8. Black cannot afford to take the knight, because the queen would be captured first. So Wei Yi won a pawn for free.

After that the queen went back to a8 and the windmill carried on. Stockfish rates the position after 38.Nxd5 at roughly four pawns in White's favour, which is decisive.

The windmill was never really about winning material by itself. It was about gaining time. While Black's queen shuffled, White could choose the moment to bring more pieces into the attack. On move 42 he did.

Cashing in

42.Bc4 b5 43.Bxf7+ Kxf7

The bishop swapped itself for the rook on f7, and Black's king was dragged out into the open.

44.Qe3 Kg8 45.Qb3+ Kh8 46.Qf7 Bb7 47.Ne8

White's queen, knight and bishop were all close to the black king, and Black's pieces could only watch. After 47.Ne8 the engine puts White more than seven pawns ahead.

47...Qd8 48.Bc7

White won on move 48.

What to take from it

1. Space is a squeeze. Pawns on f5 and c5 did not threaten anything, but they took squares away. Pieces without squares get stuck.
2. Watch the diagonals your queen is on. Indjic's queen on c7 sat on a line with two white knights, and a white bishop was ready to join that line. Before you move a queen, ask what is hiding behind the pieces near it.
3. A discovered attack is a free tempo. A tempo is one move of time. The piece that moves away can make its own threat at the same time. Then the opponent has two things to worry about and only one move.
4. The corner is not safe for a queen. A queen on a8 with her own pawns and bishop around her has almost nowhere to go. Give your queen room.

Next time you see a knight next to a bishop's diagonal, look at what is behind the queen.

Also from round 4: Aronian's escape

Round 4 had another game worth knowing about. The United States beat Ukraine 3.5-0.5, and Levon Aronian won a game in that match after the engine had him behind. Aronian (2725) was Black against Roman Dehtiarov (2508), and by move 24 the engine had White clearly ahead.

This is the position with White to play on move 24.

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Position before 24.Nf6. White to play.

The simple 24.Bd3 keeps White in control. Stockfish 17.1 has White roughly a pawn and a half ahead after it. Instead White played the knight sacrifice 24.Nf6, and after 24...gxf6 25.exf6 Bxf6 the engine says the position is about even, slightly better for Black. That swing of about two pawns came from choosing the exciting move over the simple one.

The game went on until move 53 and Aronian won. The lesson for your own games is the reverse of the windmill. When you are already better, look for the calm move that keeps everything protected, before you reach for the sacrifice.

More from the 2026 Chess Olympiad in Samarkand: Wesley So's Queen Offer at the Samarkand Olympiad, from Round 3.