frankly, problems like these will not help improve your chess. For the best results, study tactics and endgames!
2 move mate
Sort:
this is really a difficult one but I think the first move is Nb4 then next will be a forced mate.
No, Nb4 can be answered ...Ne3 with no mate available in 1 move
Glad I'm not the only who found it hard.
@madhatter5 - I was under the impression that problems were a good way of sharpening your understanding of mating patterns. I do study tactics and strategy but do problems for a break and for a bit of fun.
let's take a closer look after Ne3, it can be answer by Nc3 hopefully it's a forced mate.
Dec 7, 2011
0
#6
problems like these are indeed very entertaining, but the key is, by nature, very unusual. This makes them bad for chess improvement. White to move and win problems are very helpful, however.
I apologize for the misunderstanding.
One key aspect that is different in this puzzle is Black's reponse to White's first move doesn't matter.
I'm used to looking for a forcing move which will move the Black king to the place where the 2nd white move will be checkmate. In my solution to this puzzle the Black king doesn't move and whichever knight or bishop move is made by Black doesn't prevent the 2nd white move from being checkmate.
So I'm saying I know the answer, but I don't want to show it in this post because I'm sure chess.com members can figure out the answer from knowing the first white move does not make (or allow) the black king to move.
If you want to look at my answer look at my next post.
White king to e2, followed by any black knight or bishop move and then white moves the a4 knight to c3 for checkmate. The white Ke2 move prevents the black king from moving and white has so many ways to cover the squares around the black king that none of the black knight or bishop moves will block enough threats to prevent the Nc3 checkmate.
i found the solution. highlight the text: 1.Ne5 Nxe5 2.Nc3#
delcarpenter wrote:
White king to e2, followed by any black knight or bishop move and then white moves the a4 knight to c3 for checkmate. The white Ke2 move prevents the black king from moving and white has so many ways to cover the squares around the black king that none of the black knight or bishop moves will block enough threats to prevent the Nc3 checkmate.
Sorry but no. If the reply to Ke2 is ...Bg4+ then it is no good as white will need to move out of check. As I said it is a tricky one
bigryoung wrote:
i found the solution. highlight the text: 1.Ne5 Nxe5 2.Nc3#
Sorry but also wrong. Black does not need to play 1...Nxe5 and could move 1...Bd5 2 Ne3+ Kxd5
good
1-Nb4
2-Nc3
Well done NJH! It is suprising to me what moving the bishop to c5 allows mate regardless - as far a I can see it only prevents the black king moving to d4 which is already covered by the knight on c6. It also allows the queen to move and check on b2.
This is my first post on here. I have just started playing chess again after 15+ years off! Over the last few weeks I have been trying to improve my game with playing games and solving puzzles.
Some days I can easily solve a puzzle whereas others I can't for the life of me and start tearing my hair out. This is one of the latter puzzles from an old book of chess - this puzzle is from 1886!
I know the solution now as I spent several hours looking, was convinced I had it and then discovered I was wrong after checking the answer.
In my very limited experience this is an incredible solution and says so much about the depth of chess. It is amazing how a move and the different reply can create so many different possibilities and change the pattern of the mate.
I would be interested to see what others think of this, see if you struggle to solve and hear you logic as to the key(s) to the solution.