The Two Horsemen of the Progressive Chess Apocalypse
An extreme journey in the world of Tremendous Chess through practice games allowed us to collect unexpected and, I would even say, unique material.
Of course, the exploration of this world is still ongoing - the first experimental tournament is underway, and regular tournaments will soon be launched. However, it is in practice games that you can test ideas and make the first sketches of the tactics and strategy of the game.
Surprising as it may seem, but many chess players, and those with decent qualifications, who agreed to take part in practice games, turned out to be completely unprepared for the challenges that fell on them in the process of researching and analyzing this other chess reality called Tremendous Chess.
Caught in the extreme conditions of a giant 16x16 board and an incredibly huge number of chess pieces on the board, they missed elementary mating threats and quickly lost without having time to figure out how this could happen.
It's not even that the tactics and strategy of ordinary chess are so different from progressive ones (in fact, this is far from being the case), most likely, it all comes down to the fact that the thinking of a player in ordinary chess is limited to the framework of these standard chess, it is narrow specifically and works with a strict chain of successive events of action-counteraction to certain circumstances, in other words, the ability to think progressively among chess players who play according to the FIDE rules and recognize only standard chess as chess is completely absent.
I invite you to test your ability to think progressively with the following simple examples from practice games played in Tremendous Chess at abstractgames.ru
To make it easier for you, let me point out the final position after checkmate that should result from solving these examples:
Checkmate with a knight and a bishop (with a change of color) is the very first and main checkmate scheme with the king blocked by its own pieces.
Positions to solve
Remember that in progressive chess the move number corresponds to the number of moves in a series. The odd move number always belongs to White, and the even move number always belongs to Black.
TC (9.1) - No. 1
White's ninth move and mate
TC (9.2) - No. 2
White's ninth move and mate
TC (9.3) - No. 3
White's ninth move and mate
TC (10.1) - No. 4
Black's tenth move and mate
Solutions
TC (9.1) - No. 1 / White's ninth move and mate:
Here White only needs seven moves to checkmate Black. And this despite the need to get away from the check on the first move of his series. The number of paces for setting a checkmate has decreased due to the a3-n16 diagonal free from pieces.
TC (9.2) - No. 2 / White's ninth move and mate:
Again, the free diagonal p6-f16 allows you to quickly deliver White's bishop to the place of the attempt on the king and checkmate in just seven moves, as in the previous example.
TC (9.3) - No. 3 / White's ninth move and mate:
Black checks again with the last move of his series, but this does not prevent White from checkmate. Bishop b8, standing on the open diagonal, has retained an extra tempo and this allows White to carry out the entire operation in eight moves.
TC (10.1) - No. 4 / Black's tenth move and mate:
In the allotted ten moves, Black delivers checkmate in just eight. Again, the duet of the knight and the bishop puts an end to the game.
As we can see, such an effective interaction of two chess pieces became possible due to the lack of maneuverability of the opponent's king and the unfortunate positioning of the other pieces, which allowed the knight-bishop duet to quickly penetrate into the rear.
In Tremendous Chess, as well as in regular progressive ones, it doesn't matter on what move of the series you deliver checkmate, so if you manage to find a shorter way in the given examples, it will speak, first of all, of your foresight and excellent combinational vision. And, yes, no doubt, you are an excellent chess player and know how to think progressively.
