Hi duniel,
I'm not a very strong player but maybe my thoughts are helpful to you anyway, so I post them for you.
Here's the puzzle you're refering to:
The task is mate in three. As a general advise for our moves we should always look for the moves which are restricting the oponent's king mostly. As a second consideration, I'm looking if Black can interrupt my series with checks by himself. Since both the queen and rook are able to attack White's king I know that I have to look for possible checks by myself and can't allow a break for Black. This reduces the possibilities to two pieces, the queen and the rook. For two reasons I firstly looking out for queen moves:
a) The queen is generally more powerful and able to deprive the king of more fields.
b) In this special situation White's bishop is hanging and only the queen can protect it at the same time while giving check.
So our first candidate is Qb5+. Looks good at the first glance, leaving the king only one square to escape. Unfortunately, after 1.Qb5+ Kd4 there is no way for White to continue his series of checks without sacrifising the queen. Such sacrifice would not help since the position is to open for a mate with rook and bishop only. Since we already established that we can't interrupt or series of checks 1.Qb5 is a dead end.
There's another queen check to consider, Qc7+. But since it let's the same problematic square d4 open for the King to escape and without better oportunities to continue we can disregard this move as well.
This leaves us with the rook, sacrifising the bishop: 1.Ra5+ Kxc4. NOw the task is easier. actually, the king did us a favour capturing the bishop because this opens the 4th rank for our pieces.
Since it would make no sence to move the rook again for a check because the king could simply retreat to the same field it's time for the queen. Only one square makes sence in this position, 2.Qb5+ Kd4.
The third move is almost playing by itself, the queen is in a good position and restrains the king heavily so we use the rook. 3.Ra4# and done for this variation, but our task is not finished yet.
Instead of capturing our bishop Black's king can reject the sacrifise try to run: 1.Ra5 + Kd4. We know the same mating attack wouldn't work because our own bishop is blocking the 4th rank. But with the rook guarding the 5th rank we've got another way to hunt the king: Our queen, rook and bishop are all three eying d5 whilst Black is protecting it only two times. That suggests we have an opportunity for a good trade. Easy góing: 2.Rd5+ Rxd5 Qxd5#.
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Cheers,
Spielkalb
Hello everyone,
try to solve this tactic problem: http://www.chess.com/tactics/?id=66161
I was wondering, which white's move strong players calculate first? Is that completely random or is there a correct way to choose one? There are really many candidates moves. Tactics is not so difficult, but it can take long if one starts with wrong moves.