that puzzle was easy...all my moves were totally forced.

did sliwa play 24... Qxe2 in the game?

black should have done 24....Qa5 instead he would have been still in the game then.

It's interesting to play a puzzle from the side of the player who loses, point for originality right there, but as a puzzle it was pretty easy, all forced moves, I think.

nice, the problem with the back rank mate.

You make a good point, tonydal!  Finding the critical position and then the critical move is one thing in a puzzle/problem (when everybody knows to look for SOMETHING out of the ordinary) and quite another in a tournament when under stress and time pressure.  Not too long ago Kramnik blundered against a computer opponent and allowed himself to be mated by knight and queen!  Few people would dare to criticize a player of such stature, but he simply overlooked the mate!  There is almost always more than meets the eye in high-rated games.

I find myself puzzled, more often than not, when a game between grandmasters is resigned by the loser.  Sometimes it takes me several minutes to see why the position is lost...Sometimes I never do get it!

Thanks for sharing this illustration!  And thanks for taking time to explain the youngster's game to him (the kid from Finland who shared his drawn game). 

I'll be checking your postings more in the future!

lol i didnt mean that the position was easy, i just thought it was funny to play a puzzle when all the moves were totally forced and the result was lost :P

yep easy cz its all forced, but cool to be on the other side.

Wicked way of using the puzzle interface ;)

1...Qxe2: told to play it

2...Nxg7 only legal move

3...Nd8 again only legal move

All black has to do in this puzzle is take the bishop and play some only moves and get mated.

Qxg7+ may not be easy to find, but if you're black and your opponent plays it, it's pretty clear what your best (and only!) move is!

Anyway, that's what people meant by "easy" I think. I personally didn't think even white's moves were that hard (not trying to brag or anything, it just didn't seem too complicated) though of course in an actual game it's much harder to find these things.

After figuring out white's queen move, a quote for the great tonydal comes to mind:

"Easy as money in a pile of trash."

That's what made the puzzle easy. It's also a question one should ask themselves whenever an opponent offers up free material. Often times it's a trap like that.

After Qa5, I was wondering how Taimanov finshed... it looked to me like the kind of position that a GM like Taimanov makes seem utterly commanding but which an ordinary player can easily fumble back to equality.  After looking over the game, I think my assessment was right on the money...  Taimanov makes it look easy -- a real positional kill imo... Taimanov just improves his position and degrades Sliwas until Sliwa has nothing to do  but crack.

Yeah but I'm not. I used to be into bragging in chess but I've grown out of it.

But seriously though, the tactics just kind of flow in this one... in my puzzle book, the hard ones are when it's so hard to notice the tactical soft spots to even come up with a move.

lolz