Weekly Puzzle 2

It's that time again! Who's ready for another puzzle? I am! Below is a puzzle and the moves explained.

Again, this is a position from a UNational game (Rudy Tillmann vs. James Hilton 2021).

The theme of this puzzle is to gain material while preventing checkmate. Can you find the right moves?

Below are the move explanations. Please only view once you have completed the puzzle.

1. Nde7+

This move forks the King and Rook, forcing black's bishop or queen to take the piece if they don't want to lose material. This is also a very good move since there is the second knight and white's queen protecting the piece.

1. ... Bxe7

This is the most logical move. Since you can't afford to lose the rook, and you can't move your king, you take with the bishop to prevent losing your queen.

2. Nxe7+

Again moving the knight to e7. This move works yet again because you fork both of black's rooks and their king. Either move the king or take with the queen and lose material regardless.

2. ... Kf8

This avoids the check given by the knight, letting black keep their queen. However, this does lose the rook helping the queen with a checkmate threat to white.

3. Nxg6+

This is the only logical move. Any other move would have results in checkmate, making black win the game. White quickly gains the advantage from Kf8 and finds the right move.

3. ... Qxg6

This takes back material from the capture on the rook from white. This is the only logical move since you don't want to double up pawns. The knight in the corner is best to not move, according to the computer when given this scenario.

4. Qxc8+

This wins the rook and knight after black moves their king. A free 8 points of material wins white the game (queen and rook > queen). Black resigned shortly after this move was made in the game.

And you have solved the puzzle.

The theme of this puzzle was to gain material while preventing checkmate. There is another move that prevents checkmate, but it loses material. If playing as black, and white made that move, how do you win material, considering you can't checkmate?

This version of the puzzle is much shorter. When black plays Qg5 and white follows up with g3, black plays Rxc6, the rooks now protecting each other. The version below shows what would have happened had black taken the knight on the 5th rank.

Of course white is now down some material, but it's generally a queen and rook game. And below this (from the same stand point) shows what would have happened if white attacked black's queen with their rook instead of moving the queen.

So now white is simply in a losing position. This is exactly why you analyze positions before making your moves (the first board shows what happened during the live game).

Thank you for doing Weekly Puzzle 2! This is a brilliant puzzle because of the fact you gain material and prevent checkmate in the process!

Thank you for reading! Consider going back to read my other posts! All are brilliant stories (and the first Weekly Puzzle is also fantastic).

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