THE COOKED MONSTER
Dear friends, today we'll talk about the so-called monster problems. This normally means that White is stipulated to mate Black in a great number of moves starting at least from 10. Although I liked experimenting with chess composition, while creating more than 150 problems and publishing two books, I have never actually dealt with such problems personally.
But first I would like to quote a part from the preface of my book "My 111 problems and studies published back in 2004 so that you understand my general approach to chess composition.
"As early as I can recall, I enjoyed solving chess problems and studies. For a long time, I kept the book of my prominent countryman Henrik Kasparian "Remarkable Studies" close at hand. Simultaneously, I began experimenting with chess composition myself.
I was 12 when I composed my first chess problem. It was later published in the article by the famous composer and study-maker Alexander Sarychev, whom I had had the fortune to meet. Yet despite this positive experience at a young age, it is only in the last couple of years that I have composed a significant number of problems. Of course, I do not consider myself a chess composer and have never participated in competitions. This kind of creativity affords me great pleasure and is an enjoyable way of spending my leisure time between tournaments.
On a personal note, I prefer threemovers and fourmovers, as I believe one manages to express the thematic idea more fully, which is intrinsically much harder to do in twomovers because of their short solution. On the other hand, in the moremovers, the main idea can be overshadowed due to the complexity of the solution."
The "complexity of the solution" is what kept me from creating such monsters! So by now having composed almost all types of chess problems from mate in 2 till mate in 9, only last year I came up with the following problem, where White needs whole 11 moves to mate Black. Try to solve this one.
Last year I saw the following monster by Jan Hartong in "FIDE Album 1945 -1955" which interested me at once. White had to mate in 21. So I started solving it only to discover that I found a faster mate in 14 and on top of that with different move orders which is categorically not allowed. Of course, it was disappointing. Such puzzles are known as cooked.
But the author's solution was of great beauty indeed. So, I tried to make it work anyway, and finally, the puzzle took on the following form.
After such adventures and discoveries, it was no more difficult for me to compose a couple of monsters by myself. Go ahead and try to solve these as well, and if not, have a look at the solutions.
