How To Solve Chess Puzzles │ 0 - 1000 Elo

In this chapter of my blog, we'll take a look at chess puzzles designed for beginners who are starting their journey.

With each puzzle, you will learn simple tactics and strategies that will help you in your real games. From simple checkmate to various piece maneuvers, these puzzles will help you build a strong foundation in chess. Almost all of these puzzles involve very straightforward tactical sequences that are easy to spot and easy to follow up. So whether you are a complete beginner or you have a basic knowledge of the game. these puzzles will provide you with an enjoyable challenge and a great start to a world of puzzles.

QUICK MENTION
Below each puzzle there will be a solution that will explain a puzzle and help you understand it, so when you're solving them try not to look at the solution unless you cannot find the answer. Good luck and have fun!

PUZZLE 1

SOLUTION
The most important thing to look for in any chess puzzle is checks. In this position, we only have one that works and that is Nf6 which is also a fork on the king and queen. After the exchange white is up a material and has a big advantage in the endgame.

PUZZLE 2

SOLUTION
In this position, there is a little more going on. White's knight is being attacked and if we move it back then the bishop on d7 is hanging. Once again, we need to see if we have a check. Well, we have 2 and let's take a look at them. We can give a check with knight by moving it to c6 but that wouldn't work because that square is protected by a pawn. We also have one more check and that is Bb4 which also happens to be a checkmate since the king has no legal moves.

PUZZLE 3

SOLUTION
This one is a little harder but not that much. You'll notice the battery with white's queen and rook that is aiming at the f7 pawn. That move also happens to be a check on the king. After the king moves away to h8 we have a quick backrank checkmate with Qf7 following it up by Rf7.

PUZZLE 4

SOLUTION
In the following position, black is up 2 rooks for a bishop but white pieces are very active and close to the enemy's king. White's queen is targeting both Black's rooks. By looking at the position you should take a rook that will come with a check and that is Qxf8. After the king moves we could take the other rook and be up material but since the enemy king is surrounded by white pieces we should be able to deliver a mate pretty fast. We need to coordinate the bishop and queen to checkmate the black king. Queen to g8 forces the black king to h6 and in that position we have a very easy-to-find mate in 1 and that is Qh8.

PUZZLE 5

SOLUTION
In this position, we can see that the white king is in the open, and the white knight that is only defended by a queen. The following tactic is a little harder but once you see the idea behind it I'm sure you will be able to spot it very easily next time you come across it. When looking for checks we can see that there is only one and that is Nb4. But that loses a knight, right? Actually no, the pawn in front of the king is pinned by our queen which means it cannot take our knight and we have a fork on the king and the queen.

PUZZLE 6

SOLUTION
When looking at the position we can notice a few important things. The black king is very weak and it cannot move anywhere because of our bishop on c5. Also, there is a battery with White's queen and bishop. We can use it to deliver a checkmate. There's only one check and that is Bg6 which forces black to take our bishop with a pawn. But we have a follow-up move that can go to that square and that is queen take pawn which is a checkmate.

PUZZLE 7

SOLUTION
We have entered new stage of our puzzle-solving adventure. In this position, we don't have any checks so you need to start to look at the second forcing move which is attacking and creating threats to the enemy pieces. After a king, the most valuable piece is the queen. Can we attack it? If you look around you can easily find that the knight can attack a queen which is also a fork. Black cannot do much as we have opened the C file for our rooks to slide to the eighth rank and have a really powerful attack.

PUZZLE 8

SOLUTION
Once again, when looking at this position we don't have any checks so we need to create an attack on a powerful piece, the queen. We can attack it by our bishop with Bc5 and it is protected by our queen since the black queen and the king are on the same diagonal it's pinned meaning it cannot move and we win the queen.

PUZZLE 9

SOLUTION
Here, the black rook is attacking our queen but we don't need to move it. First, let's take a look at checks. We have one which is knight to e7 and that happens to be a fork on the king and the rook. After the king moves we can take the rook that was attacking our queen before and the f7 pawn is pinned so that if it takes our knight we can take a rook on the f8.

PUZZLE 10

SOLUTION
This one is by far the hardest one and has to do with checkmating the king who is very weak. White king is one move from being checkmated so our every move needs to be a check. We have a few ones to start off but the most straightforward one is queen to e8. Enemy king has only one legal move and that is h7. Let's find another check. If we go back to e4 with our queen it is going to be a draw by repetition. Notice that the queen can go to one more spot and that is g6. With this, we created a battery with our queen and rook which we can use to deliver a checkmate on g7.

At the end of our little adventure, I want to say a big THANK YOU for solving these puzzles and I hope you learned something new and improved your puzzles solving skills. If you solved every puzzle, huge congratulations to you! Have an amazing day and I will see you in my new chess adventure!