Thursday 9 February 2012

Four puzzles in one

Having reviewed "Exploration in Chess Beauty" by Andras Toth the other day, I feel I have to give at least on example problem from the book. In fact
while it starts out as one puzzle, it actually turns into four, with a different solution each time. The first puzzle starts with the diagrammed position. In the given position White first takes back the last move they played, and then checkmates in 1 move. Hopefully you don't find it too difficult, as 3 more problems await. Having solved the first one, you move everything up one rank (eg the bishop is on d2, the white king is on f3 etc). Again White has to take back their last move, and checkmate in 1 with another move. Once you've solved this (harder) problem, you move everything up another rank for problem 3, with the same conditions, before doing it one more time for question 4. This remarkable set of problems were composed by M Abadshaev in 1938, and until I read Exploration in Chess Beauty I had never seen them before. Enjoy!

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