How To Solve Chess Puzzles │ 1000 - 2000 Elo
In this chapter of my blog, We'll take a look at chess puzzles designed for intermediate players.
In this range of puzzles, you will learn/practice new tactical patterns and ideas that will help you in your real games. We will gradually boost your pattern recognition and calculations. The puzzles are going to get harder and more complex, therefore we will need to spot harder tactics. But don't let that discourage you. I will try to explain each puzzle as best as I can.
If you at any point get stuck on one or more puzzles, read the solution very carefully and try to understand the idea that is needed to solve the puzzle. If you see that the puzzle is complicated and you need to practice it more, take your time and once you can confidently see the pattern you can move on.
QUICK MENTION
Below each puzzle there will be a soluton that will explain the puzzle and help you understand it, so when you're solving them try not to look at the solution unless you cannt find the answer. Good luck and have fun!
PUZZLE 1
SOLUTION
We can see that white has almost a checkmate on c7 but there's a black queen covering that square. When you see this kind of puzzle where there's almost a checkmate, the answer is going to be relying on that. We need to find a way to distract the black queen out of the vision of C7 square. There is a clever way to do that. White's bishop on h3 can be used to capture a pawn on e6 with a check. You will notice that black's king has no moves and white's bishop can lure the queen so that we can checkmate black on c7 square.
PUZZLE 2
SOLUTION
In this position, we have 2 rooks doubled up on the g file aiming at the g2 pawn. We can take that pawn with a check. Important notice, white is threatening a checkmate with Qd7 so every move needs to be a check. We have 2 checks in this position. Let's take a look at both of them. We can play Rg1 but that would be a mistake. Why? Because the white king is very weak and surrounded by our pieces. We also have another check and that is Rh2. We are sacrificing a rook and attracting the king to h2 square and since white has no other legal moves they have to take our rook. This meets a mate in 2 starting with Qxf2 and wherever the king moves we simply have a mate in one.
PUZZLE 3
SOLUTION
In this position, we have a battery formed with our bishop and queen lining up to the b2 square. It would be a checkmate but there is a knight blocking the vision. We can deal with it by giving a check. We only have one and that is Nd3. Either way white takes our knight we have a checkmate on b2. This tactic is called CLEARANCE which means we cleared the way/vision for our bishop and queen to deliver a checkmate.
PUZZLE 4
SOLUTION
Checks, captures, attacks, do we have any? We have a check with our knight (Ne2) which forces the black king to the corner and also to the line of sight with the white rook. Doubling our rooks on the h file to deliver a checkmate is not a bad idea, but the problem with it is that it's too slow. Instead, we need to sacrifice a rook on the h2 because our other rook can slide onto the h file and deliver a checkmate. Notice how our knight is controlling the escape squares on the g file and our rook controlling the h file. You can look at this mate as a backrank but on the sideways. This mate with a rook and knight is called ANASTASIA'S MATE.
PUZZLE 5
SOLUTION
In the next puzzle, we have an enemy's king who's very weak. Notice how we don't have any checks with the queen because the knight and bishop are covering those squares, and also the knight is protecting the rook. Same thing with our rook. In that case, we need to bring other pieces into the attack and that's our bishop. Giving a check on b4 forces the enemy king closer to our pieces. Now that the king is on d1 we have a nice tactic here. Seeing that both our rook and queen can go to d2 delivering a check while being protected by the bishop we can sacrifice our rook with a check. If white takes our rook it's checkmate with our queen. If they don't take and let's say move the king then our bishop is on the same diagonal and we can place our rook anywhere with a discover check winning some material a possibly checkmating.
PUZZLE 6
SOLUTION
This puzzle is about making threats to your opponent. The first move is pretty obvious and that is queen to b3 check. This forces the king back. What do we do now? We don't have any checks or captures in the following position. Here's where we go one step further and move to making threats. There's a couple of good attacking moves here. Notice how our rook is attacking the bishop on b7. We can attack that piece and threaten a checkmate with our queen. That move would be queen to f7. Enemy responds with Qf6 defending against checkmate. If we take the queen they will recapture the pawn and we don't really have an advantage. That's why we need to take the bishop because our queen is protecting the rook and we can win material.
PUZZLE 7
SOLUTION
In this puzzle white has 2 rooks doubled up on the D-file attacking our rook. Since we don't have any checks we must take white's rook, otherwise we'll lose ours. Once we have the following position with a rook and queen each we can start looking at tactics. If we take white queen we get into the endgame with an equal position, which is not bad but the key is to find a winning tactic that would give us an advantage. There's a way to distract the white rook from the defense of the queen. The move is rook to e1 which is a check to the king and also attacks white rook. There's not much white can do and if they take our rook we can simply take the queen and have a big advantage instead of being equal.
PUZZLE 8
SOLUTION
The opponent's king is very weak and is being attacked by our queen and bishop. When you have a position similar to this one, remember to not let the opponent's king escape via certain squares. For example, in this position, we would like to take a pawn with our queen. That would be a mistake as our opponent can run away with their king via C7 square because our queen is not covering that square anymore. When applying this rule the only other check that should come to your mind is d6 which cuts off the king's escape. Now, there are 2 checks available, c5 and b4. Let's analyze both and choose the better one. Qc5 check can be blocked with a pawn and we don't have a way to checkmate the king. On Qb4 king can only move to one square and that's a6. We can see that the white king has no moves and any check with other pieces would lead to checkmate. That's where our bishop comes to help as we play Bc4. The only move is to block with a pawn and that leads to a very easy checkmate with queen and bishop.
PUZZLE 9
SOLUTION
In this puzzle, our opponent's king has no moves and it's easy to checkmate him. That's why we need to expose the king and deliver a checkmate. On the other hand, our king is quite weak and we are down a full rook, which indicates that the solution needs to be a checkmate rather than a capture of a certain piece. The correct move is quite hard to see but we need to sacrifice our queen on h7 with a check. This forces the black king to h7 where it's met by our rook that we slide into the H file. This tactic works because of 2 reasons.
1. our pawns on f5 and f7 prevent the king from escaping from the H file
2. there are no pieces to block the check that would stop the checkmate
PUZZLE 10
SOLUTION
We can see that our opponent has a weak king and all of our pieces are active. This means that the solution is a checkmate. Notice how if our rook on b1 was on b8 it would be a checkmate because it's defended by our bishop and also D file is covered by our second rook. The only issue is that there is a pawn that's blocking our rook from coming to d8. That's why we need to use our queen as a deflection with a Qc6 check. The king has no moves and it forces black to take our queen and now when the B file is open we can slide our rook to c8 as I mentioned before and deliver a checkmate.
NOTE: This pattern is quite similar to the last puzzle as in both puzzles opponent's kings had no moves so we used that resource to our advantage in delivering a checkmate.
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 puzzle solving skills. If you solved every puzzle correctly, huge congratulations to you! Have an amazing day and I will see you in my new chess adventure! 
