Today’s Chess Problem 9/19/11

 

1. Qa4+ QxQ else black looses a Q
   Nc7+ Kf8
   RxR+ Qe8
   RxQ Mate

   That should do it.

   Posted by Wes       09/20/2011  at  03:19 PM  



2. That’s the approach I tried first as well, and then one with a pawn attack against the queen. The I tried a 3rd solution that started with stacking up rooks and the queen in either column D or E. In all of these solutions the problem is, when the knight puts the king in check, black can castle, which throws the whole thing away ... or adds a dozen more moves to the game, yes?

   So I figured that the best solution would have the white queen finish on square E7, but saw that if she got there on a vertical move black could befuddle the set up by advancing pawn e7 ahead of time. Working that idea backwards, I came up with an initial 2 moves that set the rooks in place first, Rd2 then Rd1, then did the queen threat set up, but covered by the knight: Qb4. It’s suicide for black to take the white queen, and the only safe retreat is to A6 ... this lets white go for check on the next move, Qe7. But black can STILL castle - actually it’s his only escape. And it all falls apart again at that point.

   So what I finally figured out is that you want the queen to finish in f7 while a rook guards column d. Given white’s lack of bishops, the only way to protect the queen in F7 is with the knight. That’s too many moves for me to figure out; the set-up is several steps long and each one would HAVE to force black to make only one response, otherwise we’re going off into the land of infinite permutations again.

   Posted by Drew458       09/21/2011  at  09:16 AM  



3. Hi Drew.  You would be correct except that one of the rules of chess is that a King is not allowed to castle when in check or over a square that would put it in check.  By keeping the King constantly under attack there is no way out.  Another of the rules, just so you know, is once a King has moved it can no longer castle nor can it castle with a rook that has moved.  Without being told differently I assume the King can castle in this position if we give him the chance.

   If I were looking for a move to work on endgame technique, and not a quick win, I would play Nc7+ QxN, Qa4+ which leads to many interesting positions but not directly to mate.

   Posted by Wes       09/21/2011  at  11:07 AM  



4. News to me Wes. I don’t play the game. I don’t even like it. I know the how the pieces move, and the basic rules up to en passant, that’s it. It makes sense that you can’t castle yourself into check, duh, but I was unaware of the “unless one of the pieces has already moved” aspect.

   To my utter amazement, when I followed Christopher’s link to the notation page, I found out that the promotion rule is real - get your pawn to the other end and get a free queen. I had always figured that that was only a BS “rule” for little kids.

   Posted by Drew458       09/21/2011  at  11:48 AM  



5. Drew, Wes is correct; A King cannot castle when in check, or across a square that would put him in check.

   And yes Drew, if you get your pawn all the way across the board, you can promote the pawn to any piece, Queen, Bishop, Knight, Rook. There are times when promoting to Queen would result in stalemate. Promoting to, say a Knight, might be mate.

   Sometimes a Queen is too much of a good thing?

   Posted by Christopher       09/21/2011  at  06:25 PM  



6. Oh, I forgot. Wes solved this problem.

   Posted by Christopher       09/21/2011  at  06:30 PM  

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