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Solo Chess - Super Fun!!!
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Solo Chess - Super Fun!!!

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xiaotonghuang9
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So...

This is going to be about Solo Chess!! Have you ever heard of that? Did you play it before? Just to let you know, I think it is really fun! 

Solo Chess is in the Puzzles section in chess.com:

Then, once you click on Solo Chess, it will lead you to this chess board with a few chess pieces (that are all white.) On you first puzzle, you might see that there is no king!!!! Is that a bug?? No!! The goal in Solo Chess is to capture all the pieces. Here are the rules of Solo Chess: 

SOLO CHESS
  • Capture a piece with every move until just one remains
  • No piece may capture more than 2 times per puzzle
  • If there is a King on the board, it must be the final piece
  • Try for a perfect run in Challenge Mode!

Now that we're done with where to locate it and how to play, here are a few things I discovered while playing these puzzles:

  • lots of times, there is a target
  • sometimes you have to move around pieces to aim at the target

Well, to be more specific, when you are playing higher levels, you'll probably see a piece that is being a attacked multiple times by other pieces. If you see that, then it gets kinda easy, because all you have to do is land on that piece until only one piece is left.

Here's an example:

Can you spot the piece that has been attacked by the other pieces? Yes, that right! It's the rook! Now, be careful here. Even though the king is aiming at the rook, you can't use the king to capture right away, because there is no piece that can capture the king in Solo Chess or regular chess!! So what is the correct move? Well, there are two different answers. One is to use the knight to capture the rook, and the other is to use the bishop. It doesn't really matter which piece you capture with, it'll still mark you correct. 
I'm going to choose to use the knight to capture first:
Then the bishop can capture:
And finally, the king:
And we're done! 
The next bullet says: Sometimes we have to move around pieces to aim at the target.
That just means, that not every piece will be aiming at the target. So what we need to do is to let that piece capture something so that it can also aim at the piece other pieces are aiming at. Sounds a little confusing, so here's an example:
Can you find that target? This one is a little tricky because the bishop on g6 and the knight on e7 aren't aiming at the bishop in the corner. But, the knight on e7 is aiming at the bishop on g6. If we use the knight to capture the bishop, then the knight will be aiming at the bishop in the corner! Like this:
That was the starting position.
And this is what happens after the e7 knight captures the g6 bishop:

Tada! Now we've got both of the knights and the rook aiming at the bishop in the corner. It doesn't matter which order we capture in because there is no king! Here's one way you could capture:

Done! happy.png

After you finish a puzzle correctly the first time, it will give you a little green check mark! Above the check marks, you will see a drop down menu that allows you to choose which level you want to practice. Another thing you might notice is that if you use a piece two times, it turns black, meaning that you can't use it anymore. 

Fun fact: The levels in Solo Chess depend on how many moves it takes to solve the puzzle! Level one takes one move, level two takes two moves, level three takes three moves, etc. wink.png

Thanks a lot for reading! Bye! happy.png