I direct bridge games and tournaments and create stuff for my bridge work which people seem to want. So I set up this web page to slowly put the things (essays, programs, information) I've created into the public domain. If I were a better writer or programmer I would not be giving them away, but since I am not, I trust you will not descend upon me in anger should they not interest you or work for you...
Nothing on this site has ads or asks for a credit card number (some of the external links might). Since I maintain this site for information and entertainment purposes only, there is no security layer and some browsers may get antsy. I'll do my best to ensure none of these pages is infected with something transmittable so you can safely ignore the warnings that today's browsers insist upon, and we can keep this all free and simple.
Among the things you may currently — or eventually — find here:
(April 11, 2020)
Here is a strange 98-year-old chess problem. White, moving from bottom to top, to play and win.
Hold on. That’s not the problem. 14 of the 16 Black pieces are unable to move and the 15th, the Black Queen, is trapped and can only move back and forth one space. The remaining Black piece, the rightmost Black Knight, can move, and once it does, other pieces will be freed up one by one, leading to a quick end for White. The only way to avoid this is to capture the Knight with the White King.
That’s the easy part. And it leaves Black only one possible move next, the queen moving to the corner.
Now. What next? Be very careful! See the whole board and have a plan for an eventual win...
Not many chess problems pit a king and a pawn against the entire army of the opposition! No idea how the opponent managed to get himself into this awkward trap, but there is a way for White to win. To find it, you will need to remember a few key rules of chess pertaining to how pawns move and promote. Also, you need to find a way to checkmate the Black King despite the army of pieces it has protecting it.
That's probably the best place to start. Now that we have taken the Black Knight with our King and Black is in a holding pattern, forced to move the Black Queen back and forth, we can first envision possible ways to win against this colossus of Black pieces, since the problem claims there is a way.
Certainly it will involve moving the Pawn forward and promoting. Then, presumably, the promoted Pawn will, as a piece, move into the colossus and capture some pieces and give checkmate. The first problem is how to accomplish this without allowing Black pieces to escape.
Maybe we can capture some of the Pawns in the column of four and then capture the Black Rook with a promoted Queen, giving check. Two problems with this approach: 1) We can pick off the top two pawns in the column of four, but the third is protected by the Rook, and 2) even if we could, the other Rook, the one we intend to capture to give check, is protected by the remaining Black Knight.
So that's a dead end and leaves only one other possibility: promoting the Pawn instead to a Knight and trying to checkmate the White King that way. Is there a weakness that we can exploit?
There is! If we capture the Black Rook on the light coloured square to give check, after picking off the top two pawns in the chain above the Black King, only the Black Queen can prevent this, and if we time it so that the Black Queen is in the corner when we capture the Rook, the checkmate succeeds! Now we're getting somewhere.
But how can we ensure that the timing is right? Knights always alternate between light and dark-coloured squares every time they move. We have to ensure that after capturing the two pawns, we are on a dark-coloured square when the Queen is on a light-coloured square (and vice versa), so that eventually we move to a dark-coloured square a Knight's move away from the Rook we want to capture. Then the Black queen is forced to move from the light-coloured square to the corner, and we strike!
Note that not only does the Knight switch colours every time it moves, but so does a Pawn, with one exception. A Pawn in its original position on the second row may advance two squares, staying on the same coloured square by skipping one. If you begin by taking the White Knight, Black's Queen moves to the corner, and then advancing the Pawn two squares, our Pawn-soon-to-become-a-Knight is on a square of the same colour as the Black Queen and will remain so whatever you do from here to the end of the game. You will never be able to fix this problem and capture the Rook without being captured by the Queen on the next move!
So instead, we must be patient and move the Pawn forward only ONE square on our second move. This restores the parity we want between the colours of the squares our Pawn-later-Knight and the Black Queen are on. But there is one further snag that we must be careful about. Can you see the potential remaining blunder?
Remember, before capturing the Rook for checkmate, we must first capture the two pawns that might protect the Rook. It may seem like we can capture these two Pawns in whichever order we please, but in fact we must capture the top one first. If we capture the bottom one first, on the next move we must vacate the space, and the other pawn can move down a square. We can still capture this Pawn but the single non-Queen move destroys the parity, and our Knight will never be able to capture the Rook with the Queen stuck in the corner!
So it takes at least nineteen moves to capture the Knight with the King, promote the Pawn, capture the two Black Pawns in the correct order, and then capture the Black Rook with the Queen stuck in the corner forced to watch the checkmate. If you managed to clear all the hurdles, congrats!
Writing is something I do a lot of, editing not so much. If you are prone to the TL:DR* comment, go watch a video on YouTube, the stuff posted here will not interest you. I'd rather read something than watch something and I hate seeing sites switch to video.
* TL:DR stands for 'too long; didn't read.' For someone who struggles to get words and phrases and sentences to fit together, the only comeback to that lazy slam is DILLIGAF, which you'll have to look up on Wikipedia....
That's all for now. I'll put the date of the latest update at the bottom of this page so you can see what's happened.
Last update: October 26, 2024 (at least, the last time I updated and scrolled down to the end to change this line......)