Thursday, December 25, 2008

Puzzles of the season

Best Wishes for all!

As is customary this time of the year, riddles and problems have started to appear (one per day from 25-12-2008 to 01-01-2009) at the web address Chessbase Puzzles.

Problems for year 2008 :
25-12-2008 : Play Santa-giving-presents. Read biographical details of John Nunn, who selects and annotates this year's problems. Solve the direct-mate moremover. Do not hesitate to give Knight (easy) and Queen (where?) in order to achieve eventually mate with subpromotion of c7.
26-12-2008 : In the five-mover helpmate (where black plays first) close for a while the Bishop, which will go finally to g8.
27-12-2008 : The study can start with a checking-key, (since Black can mate in 3 moves), let us say with the Bishop on h4.
28-12-2008 : In the six-mover selfmate, (White plays and forces Black to win with mate,) two knights are sacrificed first.
29-12-2008 : To avoid the diabolical trap of stalemate in this study, give the Rook on the fourth move and the Queen on the tenth.
30-12-2008 : Eleven Black moves (begin with Re5, end with Be8) and then one White move (dxe8=Q) stalemate! It is very interesting to discover the intermediate moves.
31-12-2008 : For the five-mover selfmate, the Bishop makes a big clockwise round to d2 and the Queen is sacrificed on the other side.
01-01-2009 : Starting from the initial placing of the pieces for playing a game, we reach the position of the diagram after the ninth move of the White. The Shortest Proof Game is a nice problem with Retroanalysis. (The page that shows this problem contains a form on the upper left corner for everyone wanting to send solutions and comments to John Nunn).

Happy New Year!



Tuesday, January 20, 2009
You may read the solutions with comments here or you may replay the solutions here.


(This post in Greek language).

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