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| Posted by bunta mailcafe.net 12/29/2006 21:39:56 Play online chess |  Subject: help mate puzzleMessage: I havent read it, its chessbases's christmas present =D | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted by ionadowman mailcafe.net 12/30/2006 13:12:06 Play online chess | Here's the puzzle: Message: b If it's White to play, the thing's pretty quick: 1.Re4 Rg7 2.Rh4# Interestingly, if the WN were absent from the board, the position would still be checkmate. A clue here, maybe? My usual approach to this kind of thing is to look for a mating configuration, but I'm finding it difficult (except for the pseudo-solution shown) to discover one... The problem is that it's hard to arrange for the g6-rook to be unpinned whilst retaining the bishop's presence on that diagonal. I think I'll go away and think about it for a while... Trust John Nunn to come up with something challenging... Cheers, Ion | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted by ionadowman mailcafe.net 12/31/2006 00:13:29 Play online chess | Help in 3 is easy: Message: 1...Bh4+ 2.Nxg6 Bf6 3.Rc6 Bg7 4.Nf8# Stick a pawn at h6 and the 2-mover is simple: 1...Bxe5 2.Rg4 Bg7 3.Bxg6# Still no cigar, though... :-/ ——— Shirov Wins Shanghai Masters — Alexei Shirov of Spain has won the Shanghai Masters chess tournament, with a round to spare. Tuesday, he beat Wang Hao of China, clinching first place. It was Shirov’s third consecutive win. Under the scoring system used in Shanghai (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw), Shirov has 11 points (three wins and two draws). Levon Aronian of Armenia and Vladimir Kramnik of Russia are tied for second with 6 points each (one win, one loss and three draws), while Wang has 2 points (three losses and two draws). The top two scorers advance to the Bilbao Final Masters next month in Spain, which means that the final-round games on Wednesday will be pivotal. Aronian will be Black against ... Posted by sf115 | mailcafe.net 1/01/2007 11:19:37 Play online chess AnswerMessage: ——— A New Theory on the Origin of the Lewis Chessmen — The Lewis Chessmen are the most famous and important chess pieces in history. They have a long historical and scholarly record, part of which is that they were made in Norway roughly 800 years ago. But now two Icelandic men are challenging that belief and trying to prove that the chess pieces came from their country. The pieces were discovered on the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, in 1831 — hence their name. Carved mostly out of walrus tusk, they were found in a small carrying-case made of stone inside a sand dune. There are different theories about how they ended up there, including that they were left over from a shipwreck or that they were stolen and buried on the island and ... Posted by sf115 | mailcafe.net 1/01/2007 11:21:48 Play online chess Message: 1.Re4 Rg7 2.Rh4#" that's illegal as the rook on g7 is pinned by the bisiop. ——— Rapid Games Win Over New Fans — Many people who would like to see chess attract more fans agree that traditional games — which usually last several hours — are too slow for all but the die-hard. At the same time, blitz chess — where players have only five minutes for all their moves — are fun to watch and attract crowds on street corners, but they are riddled with errors. Rapid games, where each player starts with 20 or 25 minutes and then has additional time — often 10 seconds — added after each move, seem to be a happy medium. The format is becoming more popular, and there are now many chess tournaments that feature it. Two elite chess events last week used rapid-game time controls. One was the annual ... Posted by vanleeuwenhoek | mailcafe.net 1/01/2007 17:47:53 Play online chess Message: ——— Aronian Leads Shanghai Masters — In 2008, the Grand Slam Chess Final Masters was created to bring together the winners of the top chess tournaments of the year. Last year, the final was reduced to four competitors from six because of the economic downturn, but it still included the winners of the year’s elite chess events. This year the formula was changed. While the grand slam still includes top chess players, their selection is more arbitrary. And there are two events: A final that will be, as in the first two years, in Bilbao, Spain (and to which Viswanathan Anand of India, the world chess champion, and Magnus Carlsen of Norway, the world’s top-ranked chess player, are already invited), and a preliminary tournament in Shanghai, China, to ... Posted by chrisp | mailcafe.net 1/02/2007 05:01:40 Play online chess Not the answer, sf115Message: white cannot play Bd1 as he is in check, so that solution isn't correct!! ——— Vishy Anand throws down the gauntlet to Magnus Carlsen — Vishy Anand set the agenda for top chess in 2010, and probably 2011, when he declared after retaining his world chess title that his ambition now is to regain the No1 spot in the global chess rankings. Anand thus laid down his gauntlet to Magnus Carlsen, the Norwegian who leads the international list and whose current rating of 2826 is the second highest mark ever after Garry Kasparov. Anand's ambition might seem reasonable for a reigning world chess champion, but in reality it is highly ambitious and there will be many doubters. At age 40, the Indian's strength now seems to be increasingly in the slower pace of one-to-one matches rather than in the cut and thrust of chess tournaments ... Posted by juve_leo | mailcafe.net 1/02/2007 08:07:22 Play online chess Message: 1...Bh4+ 2.Nxg6 Bf6 3.Rc6 Bg7 4.Nf8# your numbers are wrong Nxg6 should be Nxf6 1...Bh4+ 2.Nxf6 Bf6 3.Rc6 Bg7 4.Nf8# Posted by ionadowman | mailcafe.net 1/02/2007 10:58:08 Play online chess No...Message: vanleeuwenhoek is correct: 1.Re4 blocks the bishop's action and hence releases the pin on the rook, allowing it to retire (1...Rg7). But this obviously isn't the solution: the White knight doesn't have a role. It is very easy to get things wrong in this kind of thing. I had another "3-mover" I was about to post, but I saw, just in time, it wasn't a mate. Something to point out, too, in puzzles of this nature. Every element is there for a reason, and every move is essential. Suppose 2.Bd1 in sf115 his solution were legal. Would it have been the only move that led to mate? No. 2.Bb3 would have done just as well. Not a solution then. The solution begins with a "key move" by Black. So far, I still haven't found it. Anything other than a Bishop move seems to free up Black's King, but a bishop move is a check, which limits White's response. I almost wish the position were incorrect and that there was supposed to be a Black pawn on h6! Cheers, Ion Posted by ionadowman | mailcafe.net 1/02/2007 20:19:21 Play online chess It might help...Message: Black to play, helpmate in 2: b The difficulty here is that although R+N can mate unaided in the corner, such a setup would take more than 2 moves here. So the Black Q has to cooperate. It gets better, though. having solved it, replace the queen with a black rook, and solve. Then solve for a bishop, then a knight, then a pawn. For the last, remember thet the pawn is 5 squares away from queening, not two! I found these 5 a lot easier than than the one given to begin this thread (though the bishop one is a bit tricky). But its ideas may be a help in solving the latter. Cheers, Ion Posted by vanleeuwenhoek | mailcafe.net 1/03/2007 15:40:35 Play online chess Aha!Message: 1...Qa8 2. Bb3 Rh6 3. Rc7# Posted by honololou | mailcafe.net 1/03/2007 16:45:08 Play online chess Well done…Message: Posted by ionadowman | mailcafe.net 1/04/2007 11:11:22 Play online chess Very neat...Message: ;-) Ion |