Not "Play and win"? Worthless?!

Sometimes I hear intermediate level players protest that any problem that does not follow the normal "needs" of a chess game can't be helpful to your game. These "normal" concerns would include:

• White (Black) to play and win (if you are not 100% sure what this, or any other "normal" requirement means, check out Understanding Chess Puzzles)
• White to play and mate
• White to play and mate in N
• White to play and draw

Sometimes they even complain about "Mate in N", noting that any position where you can mate in N+1 in a game they would do so and not worry about Mate in N.

However, if we carry over this logic to other, physical, games that would imply that anyone in a sport other than weightlifting would never benefit from weight lifting, or any other exercise that is not directly their sport. That's nonsense of course, and the same applies to chess.

Everyone is different, of course, and if a particular person has an aversion to a "non-normal" chess problem then if that aversion causes them to miss the benefits, then so be it. But the average player, if he occasionally did such "board vision" problems, would probably benefit as I did when I was an improving player.

At this point I need to clarify what type of problems I am discussing. For the moment, let's eliminate "fairy" problems where the piece either move differently, or there are new pieces that move like a combination of knight-rook or knight-bishop, etc. But that still leaves a large class of problems where the pieces move exactly as they do in a chess game, but are now being asked to perform different tasks than the ones above. The possibilities are limitless and I am not an expert in this field, but this would include such problems as:

• Help mates
• Sui-mates
• Mate-avoidance
• Switcheroos (Coakley)
• Double Whammies (Coakley)
• Chess Mazes (Alberston & others - 350+ here)
• Construction (and game proofs)
• Retractors, etc.

Since in these problems the pieces move as they normally do in chess, you are strengthening one or more of your "chess muscles" when you do them, including your board vision, chess logic, tactical vision, etc. You are learning what the pieces can do, both individually and in concert. For example, doing a knight tour, while not required in a real game, can help you spot how to get your knight from one place to another efficiently in a game, and more quickly spot possible knight forks. It's very similar to the fact that practicing K&B&N vs. K can greatly help your visualization and piece coordination skills even though that endgame is rare and may only occur once or twice in your lifetime, so getting a win in those situations instead of a draw would hardly affect your playing strength. But the side effects are clearly more beneficial than the perceived direct effects.

When I first started playing I did many of these "abnormal" problems. They were great challenges. One book that had some was Irving Chernev's interesting The Bright Side of Chess. Later non-trivial retrograde problems were popularized through Raymond Smullyan's The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes and Chess Mysteries of the Arabian Knights. Lately Jeff Coakley has introduced a whole new set of interesting puzzles for all ages and levels with Winning Chess Puzzles for Kids Vol 1 and especially Vol 2 (reviewed here, with some clever examples).

Here's a helpmate that GM Jonathan Rowson says he gives to help his students think outside the box (solution at the end of this article):

So if you think those puzzles may not be for you or can't help you, that's probably a self-fulfilling prophecy. But if you believe they can't help anyone become a good player, that's clearly not true. They helped me and others in ways difficult to measure but easy to explain. Plus there's the added benefit: find some types that you like and they can be loads of fun and challenge, and isn't that part of what we want from a game?

Solution to the Rowson help-mate: Getting a knight or bishop to set up 2.Nf6 and 3.Qg8# doesn't work: 1...a1N 2.Nf6 and now both 2...Ng3 and 2...Nf2+ interfere with the mate. Ditto for 1...a1B 2.Nf6 and now 2...Bxg2 is the only legal move. So the solution is to abandon the Nf6/Qg8 pattern and go for 1...a1R+ 2.Qf1 Rxh7 3.Qf8# Cute!