That kinda looks like a Zugzwang problem to me.
I would play Kd2 and then I would be wondering what black was going to do.
Perhaps black`s best would be ....I pass.
That sounds illegal.
My favourite puzzle
Sort:
Yeah after Kd2 black's best is maybe Nxd5?
I don't even think you need to move the knight.
@Estragon:
As tricky as it is this is a routine problem in tactics training. I have solved it in 20 secs (which is reasonable for my slow thinking speed). With tactics problems I have learned that the first thing you do is that you have to look at all the checks in the position no matter how stupid they may seem. It soon becomes obvious that the knight check 'does something' and the rest comes easy. But in the problem I came up with there is no meaningful check, nothing to take, nothing to fork, no stalemate. A very quiet position, one that you rarely see in tactics training. It is not a sky high rated problem, but still is a difficult problem ( above 2100 ).
watcha wrote:
@Estragon:
As tricky as it is this is a routine problem in tactics training. I have solved it in 20 secs (which is reasonable for my slow thinking speed). With tactics problems I have learned that the first thing you do is that you have to look at all the checks in the position no matter how stupid they may seem. It soon becomes obvious that the knight check 'does something' and the rest comes easy. But in the problem I came up with there is no meaningful check, nothing to take, nothing to fork, no stalemate. A very quiet position, one that you rarely see in tactics training. It is not a sky high rated problem, but still is a difficult problem ( above 2100 ).
Is it a one move problem?
@Scottrf:
I won't tell you anything concrete about the solution (that's why I inserted it as a game rather than a puzzle) because this is the general chess forum and the psychology of it all that interests me not the particular problem.
With problem solving you tend to look for 'something' and it is very difficult to admit the key to the problem is not 'something' but the 'lack of something'.
This is the kind of problem I like (this time with solution):
Nice puzzles, both on post 6 and the other one on post 10 ! I will agree with you about the tactics trainer, it is one of the most useful thing on this site !!
Ne2-g3-f5 and ...gxf5 exf5 followed by g6-g7
You may think that tactics training is some sort of artificial thing and has little to do with 'real' games (since the problems seem 'fabricated'). I don't play live games too often. But this one clearly demonstrates how the themes (overloading, dicovered attack etc.) that you get used to noticing in positions during tactics training can really help you when playing a game.
Mine is this one, from a practical game:
Too bad I didn't record the whole game from start to finish but when I feel I have a sac I write down the piece positions. I was screwed so I knew I needed to pull out some desperation tactics.
Plain and simple (just not for me...):
Kd2-c3-c4
Scottrf írta:
Kd2-c3-c4
What principle do you use here? How do you know that Ke2 is not good for example? Is there some general rule which I'm not aware of?
The principle is that the key squares to reach with the king are c5 d5 and e5, so it makes sense to take the route where you can least be obstructed by the enemy king. Then comes some simple counting, 3 moves to get to c4, by which time the black king can only stop you immediately reaching c5 by playing Kd6, after which Kd4 takes the opposition and wins.
To work out that Ke2 doesn't work, we can see that after 2 moves the white king will be on e3, and black king reaches e6. Now it's clear that after any advance, black can take the opposition and draw.
Well, I know the position, but that would be my thought process to work it out.
Here are some more, some difficult. http://www.chess.com/blog/Scottrf/pawn-endgames
This is one of my favourite recent problems:
And some others I like:
http://www.chess.com/blog/Scottrf/tactics
This is the kind of problem I hate:
What I really like in this site is the tactics trainer. I like the way you can measure your chess vision objectively on a daily candlestick chart. Every day I practise I fight against not only the problems but my previous candles. Most of the patterns you learn quickly and they become routine (stalemate, underpromotion, queen sac for smoothered mate etc.) but some of the problems still strike you. In 90% of the cases when you fail, being shown the solution you hit your head: how could I have not seen this? But there is 10% in which the solution is only one move and is not played out further and you still don't understand what is going on. In the series of forks, double attacks, stalemates and tricky pawn endgames this was the most shocking problem for me (which at the time being shown the solution could not understand and just went to the next problem angrily):
White to move...
When I miss a mate in 7 I'm usually forgiving to myself even if the problem is low rated. I really don't think too much of these problems. I like problems in which you have to notice a simple yet not evident feature of the position which can be exploited (like forking two distant pieces on the board with the queen and things like that). That's why I blame myself for being such blind to the essence of this problem.
In is interesting that solving these problems gets more emotional for me than playing real games. May be because you don't fight an opponent which can be unpredictable and you can blame your loss on their style but you fight an objective reality and you can only blame yourself.